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Glass. 
Book. 



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TO 



THE EIGHT HON. LOKD BKOWNLOW 



IN POOK ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PRINCELY KINDNESS 



f p §M 



IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 



BY 



GERALD MASSEY. 



\ 



CONTENTS. 



The Sonnets : — 

Notices and Comments ..... 1 

Of the Personal Theory as interpreted by Charles 

Armitage Brown . . . . . 19 

Of the period at which the Earlier Sonnets were Written 

and the Person to whom they are Addressed . . 28 

Life and Character of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of 

Southampton . . . . . 50 

Poet and Patron : — 

Their Personal Friendship . . . . 94 

Personal Sonnets : — 

Shakspeare to the Earl, wishing him to Marry . . 108 

Shakspeare to the Earl, in praise of his Personal Beauty 117 

Shakspeare to the Earl, promising Immortality . . 123 

Shakspeare to the Earl, chiefly concerning a Rival Poet, 

adjudged to be Marlowe . . . . 127 

Shakspeare is about to write on the Courtship of his 

Friend Southampton, according to the Earl's suggestion 152 

Dramatic Sonnets : — 

Southampton in love with Elizabeth Vernon . . 160 

Personal Sonnets : — 

Shakspeare to the Earl, when he has known him some 

three years . . . . . . 169 

shakspeare proposes to write of the Earl in his absence 

abroad . . . . . . 171 



CONTENTS. 



Dramatic Sonnets : — 

The Earl to Mistress Vernon on and in his absence 

abroad . . . . . . 173 

Personal Sonnets : — 

Shakspeare of the Earl in his absence . . . 185 

The Dark Story of the Sonnets . . . .188 

Dramatic Sonnets : — 

Elizabeth Vernon's Jealousy of her Lover, Lord South- 
ampton, and her Friend, Lady Rich . . . 205 

A Personal Sonnet : — 

Shakspeare on the Slander . . . . 225 

Dramatic Sonnets : — 

The Earl to Elizabeth Vernon after the Jealousy . 228 

Elizabeth Vernon repays the Earl by a Flirtation of her 

own : His Reproach ..... 231 

Personal Sonnets : — 

Shakspeare is sad for the Earl's '•Harmful Deeds ' . 237 

Dramatic Sonnets: — 

A Farewell of the Earl's to Elizabeth Vernon . . 243 

The Earl to Elizabeth Vernon after his Absence . 247 

Personal Sonnets : — 

Shakspeare to the Earl after some Time of Silence . 251 

Dramatic Sonnets : 

The Earl to Elizabeth Vernon — Their Final Reconcilia- 
tion : with Shakspeare's Sonnet on their Marriage . 256 

Personal Sonnets: — 

Shakspeare to the Earl, chiefly on his own Death . 289 

Dramatic Sonnets : — 

Southampton, in the Tower, to his Countess, also Shak- 
speare to the Earl in Prison, and upon his Release . 296 

The MSS. Book of the Southampton Sonnets . . 317 

Dramatic Sonnets: — 

The ' Dark ' Lady of the Latter Sonnets . . 323 

William Herbert's Passion for Lady Rich . . 367 



CONTENTS. 



Life of Lady Rich ...... 

Thomas Thorpe, and his ' Onlie Begetter ' of the Sonnets 
Of the New Reading and Arrangement . 
'His Sugred Sonnets among his Private Friends.' 
The Man Shakspeare : A Re-touched Portrait . 



PAGE 

380 
416 
436 
460 
491 



APPEKDIX. 




Appendix A : — 




Cupid's Brand : Two Odd Sonnets 


569 


Appendix B : — 




Drayton and Shakspeare 


571 


Appendix C : — 




Queen Elizabeth's Favourites . 


575 


Appendix D : — 




Titus Andronicus .... 


580 


Appendix E : — 




'Eysell' . . . . - 


586 


Appendix F : — 




Sonnet 132, and the Taming of the Shrew 


589 


Appendix G-: — 




William Herbert and Shakspeare' s Minor Pieces 


591 


Appendix H : — 




The Silent Lover .... 


594 


Appendix I : — 




Notes on Disputed Readings. 




King John ..... 


598 


Macbeth ..... 


599 


Cymbeline ..... 


600 


Romeo and Juliet .... 


601 



AN 



INDEX OF THE SONNETS 



ACCORDING TO 



THOEPE'S ARRANGEMENT. 





PAGE 


v — 


PAGE 




PAGE 


Sonnet 1 


. 110 


Sonnet 33 . 


. 206 


Sonnet 65 . 


. 125 


» 2 • 


. 110 


„ 34 . 


. 206 


„ 66 . 


. 239 


„ 3 : 


. 110 


n 35 • 


. 207 


„ 67 . 


. 239 


4 . 


. Ill 


„ 36 . 


. 177 


„ 68 . 


. 240 


" 5 . 


111 


» 37 . 


. 168 


» 69 . 


. 241 


» 6 . 


111 


„ 38 . 


. 157 


„ 70 . 


. 226 


n 7 • 


. 112 


„ 39 . 


. 171 


„ 71 . 


. 292 


;; s . 


. 112 


„ 40 . 


. 210 


» 72 . 


. 292 


„ 9 . 


113 


„ 41 . 


. 207 


„ 73 . 


. 292 


H 10 ■ 


113 


» 42 . 


. 208 


„ 74 . 


. 293 


;; ii . 


113 


v 43 • 


. 181 


n 75 . 


. 229 


» 12 . 


114 


„ 44 . 


. 182 


n 76 . 


. 254 


„ 13 . 


114 


„ 45 . 


. 183 


„ 77 . 


. 241 


» 14 • 


114 


„ 46 . 


. 186 


n 78 . 


. 130 


„ 15 . 


. 115 


» 47 . 


. 187 


„ 79 . 


. 130 


„ 16 . 


115 


„ 48 . 


. 182 


» 80 ■ 


. 130 


;; 17 . 


116 


„ 49 . 


233 


„ 81 . 


. 294 


n 18 • 


120 


„ 50 . 


. 177 


„ 82 . 


. 133 


„ 19 . 


124 


„ 51 . 


. 178 


„ 83 . 


. 132 


n 20 . 


119 


„ 52 . 


. 183 


» 84 . 


. 132 


;; 21 . 


132 


„ 53 . 


. 121 


„ 85 . 


. 131 


„ 22 . 


121 


» 54 . 


. 121 


» 86 . 


. 131 


» 23 . 


124 


„ 55 . 


. 126 


„ 87 . 


. 245 


„ 24 . 


186 


„ 56 . 


. 229 


„ 88 . 


. 233 


» 25 . 


118 


„ 57 . 


. 373 


„ 89 . 


. 245 


„ 26 . 


109 


„ 58 . 


. 373 


„ 90 . 


. 246 


„ 27 . 


179 


» 69 • 


. 119 


„ 91 . 


. 234 


v 28 . 


180 


.„ 60 . 


. 125 


„ 92 . 


. 235 


„ 29 . . 


166 


„ 61 . 


. 181 


„ 93 . 


. 235 


„ 30 . . 


167 


» 62 . 


. 120 


„ 94 . 


. 241 


» 31 . 


168 


„ 63 . 


. 293 


» 95 . 


. 236 


„ 32 . . 


133 


„ 64 , 


. 125 


„ 96 , 


, 370 



INDEX OF THE SONNETS. 



-• T 






Q 

A 





PAGE 






PAGE 






PAGE 


Sonnet 97 . 


• 248 


Sonnet 1] 


. 272 


Sonnet ] 


. 375 


„ 98 . 


. 249 


)> 


118 . 


. 272 


)) 


138 . 


. 368 


v " • 


. 249 


V 


119 . 


. 273 


V 


139 . 


. 374 


„ 100 . 


. 252 


)) 


120 . 


. 274 


)) 


140 . 


. 374 


„ 101 . 


. 253 


)) 


121 . 


. 271 


)) 


141 • 


. 376 


n 102 • 


. 253 


)) 


122 . 


. 321 


j) 


142 . 


. 372 


„ 103 . 


. 253 


ii 


123 . 


. 303 


j? 


143 . 


. 372 


„ 104 . 


. 169 


)9 


124 . 


. 303 


)) 


144 . 


. 205 


„ 105 . 


. 255 


)} 


125 . 


. 304 


)i 


145 . 


. 342 


„ 106 . 


. $29* 


)) 


126 . 


. 170 


)) 


146 . 


. 379 


,, 107 . 


. 312 


j> 


127 . 


. 367 


)) 


147 . 


. 379 


„ 108 . 


. 254 


?? 


128 . 


. 368 


)} 


148 . 


. 376 


,, 109 . 


. 269 


)) 


129 . 


. 378 


)) 


149 . 


. 375 


v no • 


. 270 


)) 


130 . 


. 369 


ij 


150 . 


. 377 


„ Ill . 


. 270 


)) 


131 . 


. 370 


)) 


151 . 


. 378 


„ 112 . 


. 271 


jj 


132 . 


. 368 


» 


152 . 


. 377 


,, 113 . 


. 178 


)j 


133 . 


. 209 


)j 


153 . 


. 569 


„ 114 • 


. 179 


)} 


134 . 


. 209 


it 


154 . 


, 570 


„ 115 . 


. 308 


)) 


135 . 


. 371 








„ 116 . 


. 285 


)) 


136 . 


. 371 









;r 



THE SONNETS: 

NOTICES AND COMMENTS. 



' As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Py- 
thagoras : so the sweete wit tie soule of Ovid lives in mel- 
lifluous & hony-tonguecl Shakespeare, witnes his Venus and 
Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private 
friends.' Thus wrote Francis Meres, Master of Arts of 
both Universities, in his work entitled 'Palladis Tamia, 
Wits Treasury, being the Second Part of Wits Common- 
wealth,' published in the year 1598. 

This is the earliest notice we have of Shakspeare's 
Sonnets, and it supplies us with an important starting- 
point. From the information given by Meres, we learn 
that in the year 1598, the sonnets of Shakspeare were 
sufficiently known and sufficiently numerous to warrant 
public recognition on the part of a writer, who is remark- 
able for his compressed brevity ; well known enough in 
certain circles for the critic to class them with Shaks- 
peare's published poems. That the sonnets spoken of by 
Meres are to a large extent those which have come down 
to us, cannot be doubted, save, in desperation, by the 
supporters of an unsound theory. Thus, according to 
Francis Meres, in 1598, Shakspeare had made the 'private 
friends ' for whom he was composing his sonnets, and if 
the sonnets be the same, the private friendship publicly 

B 



2 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

recognised, must include that which is so warmly cele- 
brated in the earliest numbers. 

Further, the title to Thorpe's Collection, printed in 
1609, reads with an echo to the words of Meres — 
' Shakspeare's Sonnets, never before Imprinted,' 1 though 
so often spoken of, and so long known to exist in MS. 

An understanding on the subject is implied in the 
familiarity of phrase. The inscriber appears to say, 'You 
have heard a great deal about the " Sugred Sonnets," 
mentioned by the critic, as circulating amongst the poet's 
private friends ; I have the honour to set them forth for 
the public' 

The sonnets were published in 160 9, 2 with this in- 
scription : — 

TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF . 

THESE . LNSVING . SONNETS . 

M r . W . H . ALL . HAPPINESSE . 

AND . THAT . ETERNITIE . 

PROMISED . 

BY . 

OYR . EVER-LIVING . POET . 

WISHETH . 

THE . WELL-WISHING . 

ADVENTVRER . IN . 

SETTING . 

FORTH . T. T. 

The book is inscribed by Thomas Thorpe, a well-known 
publisher of the time, who was himself a dabbler in 

1 Hence the title to the present work. 

2 According to the following technical account, ( Shake-speares sonnets. 
Neuer "before Imprinted. At London by G. Eld for T. T. and are to be 
solde by William Aspley. 1609.' 4°. Collation. Title, one leaf; Inscription, 
one leaf; the Sonnets, etc. B to K in fours, and L 2 leaves=40 leaves. In 
some copies, for William Aspley we have Iolin Wright, dwelling at Christ- 
church gate. 1609. The sonnets commence on B 1 recto and end on K 1 
recto, with einis. Then comes, without any advertisement, A Louers com- 
plaint by William Shakespeare. It extends from K 1 verso to L 2 verso, 
with a second finis. The sonnets are numbered 1 — 154, but have neither 
addresses nor any indication of the subjects. The Louers complaint is a poem 
in 47 seven-line stanzas. 



VARIOUS EDITIONS. 

literature. He edited a posthumous work of Marlowe's, 
and was the publisher of plays, by Marston, Jonson, 
Chapman, and others. Shakspeare makes no sign of 
assent to the publication ; whereas he prefaced his 
'Venus and Adonis' with dedication and motto ; the 
'Lucrece' with dedication and argument. 

We shall see and say more of Thorpe and his In- 
scription, by-and-by ; for the time being I am only giving 
a brief account of the sonnets, and the opinions respecting 
them, up to the present day. After they were printed by 
Thorpe in 1609, we hear no more of them for thirty-one 
years. In 1640 appeared a new edition, with an arrange- 
ment totally different from the original one. This was 
published as ' Poems written by Wil. Shakspeare, Gent. 
Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold 
by John Benson.' In this arrangement, we find many of 
the pieces printed in the ' Passionate Pilgrim,' mixed up 
with the sonnets, and the whole of them have titles which 
are chiefly given to little groups. Sonnets 18, 19, 43, 56, 
75, 76, 96, 126, are missing from the second edition. 
This publication of the sonnets as poems on distinct 
subjects shows, to some extent, how they were looked 
upon by the readers of the time. The arranger, in sup- 
plying his titles, would be following a feeling and answer- 
ing a want. Any personal application of them was 
very far from his thoughts. Sonnets 88, 89, 90, and 
91, are entitled 'A Bequest to his Scornful Love.' 109 
and 110, are called 'A Lover's excuse for his long 
Absence.' Sonnet 122, 'Upon the Eeceipt of a Table 
Book from his Mistress;' and 125, 'An Entreaty for 
her Acceptance.' The greater part of the titles how- 
ever are general, and only attempt to characterise the 
sentiment. 

In the editions that followed the two first, sometimes 
the one order prevailed, sometimes the other. Lintot's, 
published in 1709, adhered to the arrangement of 

n 2 



4 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Thorpe's Collection. Curll's, in 1710, follows that of 
Cotes. Gil don gave it as his opinion, that the sonnets were 
all of them written in praise of Shakspeare's mistress. 
Dr. Sewell edited them in 1728, and he tells us, by way 
of illustrating Gildon's idea, that ' a young Muse must 
have a Mistress to playoff the beginnings of fancy ; nothing 
being so apt to elevate the soul to a pitch of poetry, as 
the passion of love.' This opinion, that the sonnets were 
addressed to a mistress, appears to have obtained, until 
disputed by Steevens and Malone. In 1780, the last- 
named critic published his ' Supplement to the Edition of 
Shakspeare's Plays,' (1778) and the notes to the sonnets 
include his own conjectures and conclusions, together 
with those of Dr. Farmer, Tyrwhitt, and Steevens. These 
four generally concur in the belief that 128 of the sonnets 
are addressed to a man; the remaining 28 to a lady. 
Malone considered the sonnets to be those spoken of by 
Meres. Dr. Farmer thought that William Harte, Shak- 
speare's nephew, might be the person addressed under 
the initials 'W. H.' However, the Stratford Eegister 
soon put a stop to William Harte's candidature, for it 
showed that he was not baptised until August 28, 1600. 
Tyrwhitt was struck with the peculiar lettering of a line 
in the 20th sonnet, — 

A man in Hetu all Hews in his controlling, 

and fancied that the poet had written it on the colorable 
pretext of hinting at the ' only begetter's ' name, which 
the critic conjectured might be William Hughes. 

The sonnets were Steevens' pet abhorrence. At first he 
did not reprint them. He says, ' We have not reprinted the 
sonnets, &c. of Shakspeare because the strongest Act of 
Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel 
readers into their service, notwithstanding these miscel- 
laneous poems have derived every possible advantage 
from the literature and judgment of their only intelligent 



STEEVENS' CENSURE. 5 

editor, Mr. Malone, whose implements of criticism, like 
the ivory rake and golden spade in Prndentins, are, on 
this occasion, disgraced by the objects of their culture. 
Had Shakspeare produced no other works than these, his 
name would have reached us with as little celebrity as 
time has conferred on that of Thomas Watson, an older 
and much more elegant sonnetteer.' Afterwards he 
broke out continually in abuse of them. The eruption 
of his ill humour occurs in foot-notes, and disfigures the 
pages of Malone's edition of Shakspeare's poems. He 
held that they were composed in the 'highest strain 
of affectation, pedantry, circumlocution, and nonsense.' 
' Such laboured perplexities of language,' he says, ' and 
such studied deformities of style prevail throughout these 
sonnets, that the reader (after our best endeavours at 
explanation !) will frequently find reason to exclaim with 
Imogen — 

I see before me, man, nor here, nor there, 
Nor what ensues, but have a fog in them 
That I cannot look through.' 

. ' This purblind and obscure stuff,' he calls their poetry. 
And in a note to sonnet 54 he asks with a sneer, ' but 
what has truth or nature to do with sonnets ? 'ji Here he 
has taken the poet to task for his bad botany. Shak- 
speare has written — 

The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye 
As the perfumed tincture of the roses. 

Steevens remarks that Shakspeare had ' not yet begun 
to observe the productions of nature with accuracy, 
or his eyes would have convinced him that the cynorhodon 
is by no means of as deep a colour as the rose ! ' What 
rose ? The poet does not say a damask rose, nor a rose 
of any red. The pink hedge rose may be of as deep a 
dye as the maiden-blush, and other garden roses. The 



6 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

comparison in colour is only relative, the remark on that 
side merely general, it is the fragrance of the rose in 
which the positive part of the comparison will be found. 
The meaning is this ; the hedge-roses may be of as deep 
a dye or lovely a colour as their garden fellows in hue, 
but even then they are not so precious in perfume, and 
are not used for the purpose of distilling. Shakspeare 
knew a dog-rose from the damask-rose ; l no flower more 
familiar to him in his rambles along the Warwickshire 
lanes. He has carried into his illustrations drawn from it 
all the aversion which children have to the ' cankers ' 
that infect this wayside flower. 2 But Steevens had no 
patience with these poems ; he wrote some sad stuff 
about the sonnets, and scoffed at them in the most 
profane and graceless way. He never read them, never 
penetrated to the depths of feeling that underlie the 
sparkling surface. The conceits, that play of fancy, 
which is a sort of more serious wit, came on him too 
suddenly with their surprises. He was too slow for them, 
and they fooled him and laughed in his face. And when 
he did catch the sense of the (to him) nonsense, he took 
his revenge by decrying the impertinent jingle of sense 
and sound that had so playfully tried to tickle his obtuse 
spirit, and only succeeded in making him savage. 
Wordsworth, in his essay supplementary to the celebrated 

1 I had rather Tbe a canker in a hedge. 
Than a rose in his grace. — Much Ado about Nothing. 

2 This recalls another peevish and petulant remark of Steevens, in making 
which, he snapped too soon for his limited amount of perception. Shak- 
speare, in the 'Passionate Pilgrim,' number 10, writes — 

1 As faded gloss no rubbing will refresh.' 

Steevens catches at this, and replies : ' Every one knows that the gloss 
or polish on all works of art may be restored, and that rubbing is the means 
of restoring it.' Indeed ! Did the critic ever test his theory on an old hat ? 
It would not be advisable even to try it in burnishing the faded gilding 
of picture-frames and mirrors. Shakspeare used ' gloss ' in the sense of 
gilding. 



WORDSWORTH — COLERIDGE — CHALMERS. 7 

preface, printed with the Lyrical Ballads, has administered 
a just rebuke to Steevens, and reprehended his flippant 
impertinence. He says, 4 There is extant a small volume 
of miscellaneous poems, in which Shakspeare expresses 
his own feelings in his own person. It is not difficult to 
conceive that the editor, George Steevens, should have 
been insensible to the beauties of one portion of that 
volume, the sonnets ; though in no part of the writings of 
this poet is found in an equal compass a greater number 
of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed. But from a 
regard to the critic's own credit he would not have 
ventured to talk of an Act of Parliament not being strong 
enough to compel the perusal of these little pieces, if he 
had not known that the people of England were ignorant 
of the treasures contained in them ; and if he had not, more- 
over, shared the too common propensity of human nature 
to exult over a supposed fall into the mire of a genius 
whom he had been compelled to regard with admiration, 
as an inmate of the celestial regions, ' there sitting where 
he durst not soar.' 

This was written by Wordsworth in 1815 ; he had 
read the sonnets for their poetry, independently of their 
object, and had thus got a little nearer to the spirit of 
Shakspeare, behind its veil of mystery, and attained to 
a truer appreciation of his sonnets. About the same 
time Coleridge lectured on Shakspeare at the Eoyal 
Institution, and publicly rebuked the obtuse sense and 
shallow expressions of Steevens. 

In 1797 Chalmers had endeavoured to show that the 
sonnets were addressed to Queen Elizabeth, although 
Her Majesty must have been close upon sixty years of 
age when the sonnets were first commenced. He argues 
that Shakspeare, knowing the voracity of Elizabeth for 
praise, thought he would fool her to the top of her bent ; 
aware of her patience when listening to panegyric, he 
determined, with the resolution of his own Dogberry, to 



8 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

bestow his whole tediousness upon her. It may be men- 
tioned by way of explanation that this preposterous 
suggestion was hazarded in support of a very desperate 
ease — the Ireland forgeries. Coleridge also held, though 
on a far sounder basis, that the person addressed by 
Shakspeare was a woman. He fancied the 20th sonnet 
might have been introduced as a blind. He felt that in 
so many of the sonnets the spirit was essentially feminine 
whatever the outward figure might be, sufficiently so to 
warrant our thinking that where the address is to a man 
it was only a disguise ; for, whilst the expression would 
indicate one sex, the feeling altogether belied it, and 
secretly wooed or worshipped the other. Poet-like, he 
perceived that there were such fragrant gusts of passion 
in them, such ' subtle-shming secresies ' of meaning in 
their darkness, as only a woman could have called forth ; 
and so many of the sonnets have the suggestive sweetness 
of the lover's whispered words, the ecstatic sparkle of a 
lover's eyes, the tender, ineffable touch of a lover's hands, 
that in them it must be a man speaking to a woman. 
Mr. Knight believes that such sonnets as 56, 57, and 58, 
and also the perfect love-poem contained in sonnets 97, 
98, and 99 were addressed to a female, because the com- 
parisons are so clearly, so exquisitely the symbol of 
womanly beauty, so exclusively the poetic representatives 
of feminine graces in the world of flowers, and because, 
in the sonnets where Shakspeare directly addresses his 
male friend, it is manly beauty which he extols. He 
says nothing to lead us to think that he would seek to 
compliment his friend on the delicate whiteness of his 
hand, the surpassing sweetness of his breath. % Mr. Knight 
has found the perplexities of the personal theory so insur- 
mountable, that he has not followed in the steps of those 
who have jauntily overleaped the difficulties that meet 
us everywhere, and which ought, until fairly conquered, 
to have surrounded and protected the poet's personal 



KNIGHT — BOSWELL — DHAKE. 9 

character as with a chevanx-de-frise. He has wisely 
hesitated rather than rashly joined in making a wanton 
charge of immorality and egregious folly against Shak- 
speare. He likewise thinks it impossible that William 
Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, could have been 
the ' only begetter ' of the sonnets. Seeing the difficulties 
of the subject in all their density, he makes an attempt 
to cut a way through, at least for himself, but the success 
is not equal to the labour. 

Boswell, second son of Dr. Johnson's biographer, in 
editing a later edition of the work in which Steevens' 
notes are printed, had the good sense to defend the 
sonnets against that censor's bitterness of contempt, and 
the good taste to perceive that they are all a-glow with 
the ' orient hues ' of Shakspeare's youthful imagination. 
He ventures to assert that Steevens has not ' made a con- 
vert of a single reader who had any pretensions to 
poetical taste in the course of forty years,' which had 
then gone by since the splenetic critic first described the 
sonnets as worthless. Boswell also remarks anent the 
personal interpretation that the fondling expressions 
which perpetually occur would have been better suited 
to a ' cockered silken wanton ' than to ' one of the most 
gallant noblemen that adorned the chivalrous age in 
which he lived.' 

Dr. Drake, in his ' Shakspeare and his Times' (1817), 
was the first to conjecture that Henry Wriothesley Earl 
of Southampton, was the friend of Shakspeare who was 
addressed so affectionately in the sonnets, as well as 
inscribed to so lovingly in the dedications to his poems. 
He thought the unity of feeling in both identified the 
same person, and maintained that a little attention to the 
language of the times in which Thorpe's inscription was 
written, would lead us to infer that Mr. W. H. had suffi- 
cient influence to ' obtain the manuscript from the poet, 
and that he lodged it in Thorpe's hands for the purpose 



10 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

of publication, a favour which the bookseller returned by 
wishing him all happiness and that eternity which had been 
promised by the bard in such glowing colours to another, 
namely, to one of the immediate subjects of his sonnets.' 
Drake contended that as a number of the sonnets were 
most certainly addressed to a female, it must be evident 
that ' W. H.' could not be the ' only begetter ' of them in 
the sense which is primarily suggested. He therefore 
agreed with Chalmers and Boswell that Mr. W. H. was the 
obtainer of the sonnets for Thorpe, and he remarks that 
the dedication was read in that light by some of the 
earlier editors. Having fixed on Southampton as the 
subject of the first 126 sonnets, Drake is at a loss to 
prove it. He never goes deep enough, and only snatches 
a waif or two of evidence floating on the surface. When 
he comes to the latter sonnets he expresses the most 
entire conviction that they were never directed to a real 
object. ' Credulity itself, we think, cannot suppose other- 
wise, and at the same time, believe that the poet was 
privy to their publication.' 

About the year 1818 Mr. Bright was the first to con- 
ceive the idea that the ' Mr. W. H.' of Thorpe's inscrip- 
tion was William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke. 
It is said he laboured for many years in collecting evi- 
dence, brooded over his cherished idea secretly, talked 
of it publicly, and was then anticipated in announcing 
it by Mr. Boaden in 1832. Poor Mr. Bright ! He was 
not in time, but I think he will rejoice in eternity that 
he escaped the infamy of persistently trying to tarnish 
the character of Shakspeare for the sake of a pet theory ; 
that is, if his discovery included the personal interpreta- 
tion. Mr. Boaden argued shallowly that the Earl of 
Southampton could not be the man addressed by Shak- 
speare, and assumed desperately that William Herbert 
was ! He held him to be the ' only begetter.' 

These modern discoveries reached their climax in 



MR. BROWN'S THEORY. 11 

' Sliakspeare's Autobiographical Poems, being his sonnets 
clearly developed, with his character drawn chiefly from 
his works by Charles Armitage Brown ' (1838.) Mr. 
Brown adopts the hypothesis of Mr. Bright, that Mr. 
W. H. is the Earl of Pembroke ; he also accepts the sug- 
gestion first made by Coleridge, 1 that the sonnets are not 
sonnets proper, but a series of poems in the sonnet stanza ; 
these he divides as follows : — 

First Poem. Stanzas 1 to 26. — To his friend, persuading him 

to marry. 
Second Poem. Stanzas 27 to 55.— To his friend, who had 

robbed the poet of his mistress, forgiving him. 
Third Poem. Stanzas 56 to 71. To his friend, complaining 

of his coldness, and warning him of life's decay. 
Fourth Poem. Stanzas 78 to 101. — To his friend, complaining 

that he prefers another poet's praises, and reproving him 

for faults that may injure his character. 
Fifth Poem. Stanzas 102 to 126. — To his friend, excusing 

himself for having been some time silent and disclaiming 

the charge of inconstancy. 
Sixth Poem. Stanzas 127 to 152. To his mistress, on her 

infidelity. 

The two last sonnets he leaves out, and would also 
reject the 145th stanza on account of its measure, and 
the 146th because of its solemn nature ; and he considers 
the sonnets containing the puns on the name of 'Will' 
to be quite out of keeping with the rest, on account of 
their playful character. "Without adducing one atom of 
proof, Mr. Brown is much satisfied in assuming that 
Shakspeare was a self-debaser and self-defamer of a 
species that has no previous type — no after-copy. 

Mr. Hunter thinks the discovery made by Mr. Bright 
settles the whole matter. He considers the claims of the 
Earl of Southampton as ' too improbable to deserve 
examination, and the sooner they are dismissed from 

1 Table Talk, p. 231. 



12 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the public recollection, the better for the reputation of 
those who proposed them.' 1 

Mr. Hallam inclines to the personal theory of the 
sonnets, and evidently thinks we may safely conclude 
that William Herbert was the youth of high rank as well 
as personal beauty and accomplishment and licentious 
life, whom Shakspeare so often addressed as his dear 
friend. He remarks that, ' There is a weakness and folly 
in all excessive and misplaced affection, which is not 
redeemed by the touches of nobler sentiments that abound 
in this long series of sonnets.' 'No one,' he says, 'ever 
entered more fully than Shakspeare into the character of 
this species of poetry, which admits of no expletive 
imagery — no merely ornamental line.' But, so strange, 
so powerful is the poet's humiliation in addressing this 
youth as ' a being before whose feet he crouched, whose 
frown he feared, whose injuries — and those of the most 
insulting kind — the seduction of the mistress to whom we 
have alluded, he felt and bewailed without resenting ; ' 
that on the whole, 4 it is impossible not to wish the sonnets 
of Shakspeare had never been written.' 

Mr. Dyce, in 1864, rests in the conclusions which he 
had reached thirty years before. Tor my own part, 
repeated perusals of the sonnets have well nigh convinced 
me that most of them were composed in an assumed 
character, on different subjects, and at different times, for 
the amusement — if not at the suggestion — of the author's 
intimate associates (hence described by Meres as "his 
sugred sonnets among his private friends ") ; and though 
I would not deny that one or two of them reflect his 
genuine feelings, I contend that allusions scattered through 
the whole series are not to be hastily referred to the 
personal circumstances of Shakspeare.' 

Mrs. Jameson has suggested, not only that Southampton 

1 Illustrations of Shakspeare, vol. i. pp. 236-7. 



MRS. JAMESON — MR. CORNEY— M. CIIASLES. 13 

was the male friend addressed by Shakspeare, but that 
some of the sonnets may have been written for the Earl 
to send to Elizabeth Vernon, who afterwards became 
Countess of Southampton. 1 

Mr. Bolton Corney, in a pamphlet printed for private 
circulation, has recorded his conviction that the Earl of 
Southampton was the ' Begetter ' of the sonnets ; that 
they were written in fulfilment of a promise made to the 
earl in 1594 ; that the sonnets mentioned by Meres in 
1598 formed the work which was promised in 1594 and 
reached the press in 1609, but that they are, with slight 
exceptions, mere poetical exercises. He protests against 
the theory that they relate to transactions between the 
poet and his patron : — 1. Because as an abstract question 
the promise to write a poem cannot imply any such ob- 
ject 2. Because in the instance of ' Lucrece ' no such 
object could have been designed. 3. Because, in the 
absence of evidence, it is incredible that the man of 
whom divers of worship had reported his uprightness of 
dealing should have lavished so much wit in order to 
proclaim the grievous errors of his patron — and of himself. 
He denounces the vaunted discovery of Mr. Brown as an 
unjustifiable, theory, a mischievous fallacy. He accepts 
M. Chasles' reading of Mr. Thorpe's inscription, and thinks 
a Frenchman has solved the Shakspeare problem which 
has resisted all the efforts of our 'homely wits.' Believing 
that the Earl of Southampton was really the ' only be- 
getter ' of the sonnets, and that the inscription addresses 
the ' only begetter ' as the objective creator of them, Mr. 
Corney feels compelled to accept M. Chasles' interpreta- 
tion ; he thinks that William Herbert dedicates the 
sonnets to the Earl of Southampton, and that Thorpe 
merely adds his wishes for the success of the publication. 
He assumes that the initials ' W. H.' denote William Lord 

1 I was not aware of this fact when my article on ' Shakspeare and his 
Sonnets ' appeared in the Quarterly Revieto, April, 1864. 



14 SHAKSPEARE'S SOXXETS. 

Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke ; but he follows 
the discoverer of this undoubted fact, Mr. Bright, no 
further. As to the way in which the sonnets reached 
the press, Mr. Corney submits a new theory. 'Be it 
assumed that the volume of sonnets was a transcript 
made by order of William Herbert ; that it was then 
inscribed by him to the Earl of Southampton as a gift- 
book, and that it afterwards came, into the possession of 
the publisher in a manner which required concealment. 
With this theory, which the inscription and other pecu- 
liarities of the volume seem to justify, the perplexities of 
the question vanish. I anticipate one objection. As 
copies of the sonnets were in the hands of the private 
friends of the poet, a copy was surely in the hands of his 
patron. How then could ' W. H.' offer the earl so super- 
fluous a gift ? It might have been a substitute for a lost 
copy, or a revised text, or a specimen of penmanship, as 
it was a common enough thing for specimens of the 
caligraphic art to be offered as gift-books.' Thus, he 
holds that the sense of the inscription is : — To the 
only begetter (the Earl of Southampton) of these en- 
suing sonnets, Mr. W. H. (William Herbert) wishes all 
happiness, and that eternity promised (to him) by our 
ever-living poet. This was the private inscription, in 
imitation of the lapidary style, written on the private 
copy which had been executed for the purpose of pre- 
senting to the Earl ; and Thorpe, in making the sonnets 
public, let this dedication stand, merely adding that the 
4 well-wishing adventurer in setting forth ' was ' T. T.' 

There have been various minor and incidental notices 
of the sonnets, which show that the tendency in our 
time is to look on them as autobiographic. Mr. Henry 
Taylor, in his c Xotes from Books,' speaks of those sonnets 
in which Shakspeare ' reproaches Fortune and himself, in a 
strain, which shows how painfully conscious he was that 
he had lived unworthily of his doubly immortal spirit.' 



MR. MASSON — ULRICI. 15 

Mr. Masson 1 states resolutely, that the sonnets are, and 
can possibly be, nothing else than a record of the Poet's 
own feelings and experience during a certain period 
of his London life ; that they are distinctly, intensely, 
painfully autobiographic. He thinks they express our 
poet in his most intimate and private relations to man 
and nature as having been 'William the Melancholy,' 
rather than ' William the Calm,' or ' William the Cheer- 
ful.' 

The sonnets seem to have placed Ulrici in that difficult 
position which the Americans describe as ' facing North by 
South.' To him the fact that Shakspeare passed his life in 
so modest a way and left so little report, is evidence of 
the calmness with which the majestic stream of his 
mental development flowed on, and of the clear pure at- 
mosphere which breathed about his soul. Yet, we may 
see in the sonnets many traces of the painful struggles it 
cost him to maintain his moral empire. His mind was a 
fountain of free fresh energy, yet the sonnets show how 
he fell into the deeps of painful despondency, and felt 
utterly wretched. They tell us that he had a calm con- 
sciousness of his own greatness, and also that he held 
fame and applause to be empty, mean, and worthless. 
This is Ulrici's cross-eyed view. He reads the sonnets 
as personal confessions, and he concludes that Shakspeare 
must have been so sincere a Christian, that beins: also 
a mortal man, and open to temptation, he, having fallen 
and risen up a conqueror over himself, to prove that he 
is not ashamed of anything, set the matter forth as a 
warning to the world, and offered himself up as a sacri- 
fice for the good of others, most especially for the behoof 
of the young Earl of Pembroke, for, according to Ulrici 
he alone can be the person addressed. 

Gervinus, in his Commentaries on Shakspeare, holds 

1 Essays, chiefly on English Poets. 



16 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

that the sonnets were not originally intended for publica- 
tion, and that 126 of them are addressed to a friend ; the 
last 28 bespeaking a relation with some light-minded 
woman. It is quite clear to him that they are addressed 
to one and the same youth, as even the last 28, from 
their purport, relate to the one connection between 
Shakspeare and his young friend, and with his fellow- 
countryman, Eegis, who translated the sonnets into 
German, Gervinus considers that these should pro- 
perly be arranged with sonnets 40 — 42. He maintains 
that the real name of the ' only begetter ' was not 
designated by the publisher, the initials W. H. were 
only meant to mislead. That this ' Begetter ' is the 
same man whom the 38th sonnet calls in a similar sense 
the ' Tenth Muse,' and whom the 78th sonnet enjoins to 
be 'most proud' of the poet's works, because their 
influence is his, and born of him. He does not believe 
that the Earl of Pembroke could be the person ad- 
dressed, the age of the earl and the period at which the 
sonnets were written, making it an impossibility. He 
thinks the Earl of Southampton is the person, he being 
early a patron of the drama, and a nobleman so much 
looked up to by the poets and writers of the time, that 
they vied with each other in dedicating their works to 
him. Gervinus is of opinion that a portion of sonnet 
53 directly alludes to the poems which the poet had 
inscribed to the earl, and that he points out how much 
his friend's English beauty transcends that old Greek 
beauty of person, which the poet had attempted to 
describe, and set forth newly attired in his 'Venus and 
Adorns.' This foreign critic wonders why in England 
the identity of the object of these sonnets with the 
Earl of Southampton should have been so much op- 
posed. To him it is simply incomprehensible, for, if 
ever a supposition bordered on certainty, he holds it to 
be this. 



THE LATEST THEORY. 17 

A strenuous endeavour not to read the sonnets has 
recently been made by a German, named BernstorfF, and 
it is out of sight more successful than any attempt yet 
made to read them. It is so immeasurably far-reach- 
ing, so unfathomably profound, that Ave may call it 
perfectly successful. This author has discovered that 
the sonnets are a vast Allegory, in which Shakspeare has 
masked his own face ; he has here kept a diary of his 
inner self, not in a plain autobiographic way, but by 
addressing and playing a kind of bo-peep with his dopple- 
ganger. For the sonnets do not speak to beings of flesh 
and blood, no Earls of Southampton or Pembroke, no 
Queen Elizabeth or Elizabeth Vernon, no corporeal being, 
in short, no body whatever, but Shakspeare's own soul or 
his genius or his art. 

It is Shakspeare who in the 1st sonnet is the ' only 
herald to the blooming spring ' of modern literature, and 
the world's fresh ornament. The ' beast that bears ' the 
speaker in sonnet 51 is the poet's animal nature. The 
' sweet roses that do not fade ' in sonnet 51 are his dramas. 
The praises so often repeated are but the poet's enthu- 
siasm for his inner self. All this is proved by the 
dedication, which inscribes the sonnets to their ' only 
begetter,' W. EL — William Himself. The critic has 
freed the Shakspearian Psyche from her sonnet film, and 
finds that she has shaken off every particle of the con- 
crete to soar on beautiful wings, with all her inborn love- 
liness unfolded, into the empyrean of pure abstraction ! 
There sits the poet sublimely ' pinnacled, dim in the 
intense inane,' at the highest altitude of self-consciousness, 
singing his song of self-worship ; contemplating the 
heights, and depths, and proportions of the great vast of 
himself, and as he looks over centuries on centuries of 
years he sees and prophesies that the time will yet come 
when the w T orld will gaze on his genius with as much awe 
as he feels for it now. ; Is this vanity and self-conceit ? ' 

c 



18 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the critic asks, and he answers, 'JSTot a whit, simple 
truthful self-perception.! ' Into this region has he fol- 
lowed Shakspeare, where ' human mortals ' could not 
possibly breathe. He keeps up pretty well, self-inflated, 
for some time, but at length, before the flight is quite 
finished, our critic gives one gasp, showing that he is 
mortal after all, and down he drops dead-beaten in the 
middle of the latter sonnets. 

The mind of Shakspeare is a vast ocean teeming with 
life, and his works, critically considered, afford an oceanic 
space and range for every sort of creature and mental 
species that come to sport or make sport in this great 
deep. Also, the sonnets have caused much perplexity 
and bewilderment, as is sufficiently reflected in the pre- 
sent account, but of all the strange things that have 
taken advantage of the largeness and the liberty, this 
author is surely the oddest. His theory is a creation 
worthy of Shakspeare's own humour, sincere past all per- 
ception of foolishness. What we require is the secret 
cue to his profundity, at which we can but dimly guess. 
It may be that he has explored the Shakspearian ocean 
so determinedly and dived so desperately, that he has 
found the very place where, as is popularly supposed of 
the sea, there is no bottom, and he has gone right 
through headlong ! 



OF THE 



PERSONAL THEORY 



AS IXTEKPEETED BY 



CHARLES ARMITAGE BROWN. 



Xow tliis ill-wresting world is grown so bad, 

Mad slanderers bv mad ears "believed "be. — Sonnet 140. 



There lias never yet been any genuine, honest attempt to 
grapple with, and truly interpret, the sonnets. A theory 
has sprung up in the mind of a reader here and there, and 
straightway all the effort and the energy have been de- 
voted to the theory ; the sonnets being left to shift for 
themselves. There has been no prolonged endeavour to 
grasp the reality. Xo one has yet wrought at the sonnets 
with the amorous diligence and sharpened insight and pain- 
ful patience of an Owen at his work ; sought out the scat- 
tered and embedded bones of fact, and put them together 
again andasain, until thev should fit with such nicety that 
the departed spirit which once breathed and had its being 
in these remains, should stir with the breath of life, and 
clothe itself in flesh once more, and take its original 
shape. There has been nothing done, except a little sur- 
face work. Thorpe's Inscription has afforded a dehghtful 
bone of contention, most savoury and satisfactory to the 

c 2 



20 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

critical wranglers who love to worry each other most over 
the point that is of least importance, and who, when they 
have even got a good bone, will eagerly drop the reality, 
like the fabulist's dog, and spend all their might in trying 
to grasp its shadow. Give them such a question for de- 
bate as this : ' Did Shakspeare call Cleopatra a gipsy 
because she was an Egyptian ? ' or was an Elizabethan 
necessarily a cripple because he spoke of being 'lamed 
by Fortune?' and there will forthwith be a vast display 
of learned folly ; the most shallow device will serve to 
show their deepest profundity. So that the subject of all 
Shakspearian subjects, being of such vital interest and so 
personal to the poet of whom the world is anxious to 
hear the least whisper of authentic fact, has been left 
almost untouched, and there is no opposition theory to 
take five minutes' labour in demolishing ; no opponent 
worthy of steel ; no antagonist that calls forth the respect- 
ful sword-salute. The most considerable attempt hitherto 
made — that of Messrs. Boaden and Brown — is about equal 
in value to the work of those painters, whose art consists 
solely in the knack they have of disguising all the diffi- 
culties of a subject, not of their skill in conquering them. 
In dealing with the sonnets they both adopted a policy 
old as that of the hunted ostrich. 

And yet it is of great importance to have this question 
of the sonnets settled. We must be ignorant hypocrites 
to continue talking as we do on the subject of our great 
poet's character, and believe what we do of his virtues 
and moral qualities, if these sonnets are personal confes- 
sions. And if they be not, then all lovers of Shakspeare 
will be glad to get rid of the uncomfortable suspicions, 
see the ' skeleton ' taken to pieces, and have the ghost 
of the poet's guilt laid at once and for ever ; so that 
wise heads need no longer be shaken at ' those sonnets,' 
and fools may not wag the finger with comforting reflec- 
tions upon the littleness of great men. The poet's bio- 



MR. BROWN'S SHORTSIGHTEDNESS. 21 

graphy cannot be satisfactorily built, with tliis shifting 
sand of the sonnets at the foundations. 

To illustrate and enforce his theory of the sonnets, 
Mr. Brown has appended a prose version of their con- 
tents. And it is interesting to compare the two ; for, in 
order to make ends meet, he has been compelled to slur 
over or leave out all the most important matters ; all the 
literaiities and italicised meanings of the poetry. These 
did not concern him, apparently, because not necessary to 
his theory. Nor does he appear to have suspected that, 
whilst marching forward in such easy triumph to his con- 
clusions, he was leaving in his rear many a masked bat- 
tery, any one of which would be able to sweep his forces 
from the field. He could not have seen the drift of what 
he was leaving out, or he would surely have attempted to 
paraphrase it in some specious way. 

His reading is rendered utterly worthless, and the 
theory is invalidated, by the suppressed evidence. He 
has not noticed that the youth addressed is fatherless, and 
that in consequence of this the roof of his house is going 
to decay, and the poet urges him to marry on purpose to 
repair this roof, and uphold his house by ' husbandry in 
honour.' He has left out the personal allusion to the 
poet's ' pupil' pen, and the promise to ' show his head' in 
public print, when he had written something that should 
worthily prove his great respect, and enable him to 
' boast,' as he afterwards did in his dedications, how 
much he loved the earl. All these things have been 
overlooked and omitted, because they are opposed to the 
Herbert theory in every particular. Then the tender 
history of lost friends, who were so near and dear, and 
whose love was of the most sacred kind, with all the 
special revelation of sonnets 30, 31, is passed over. Mr. 
Brown dare not touch it. Yet these precious friends who 
are buried were most intimately related to the speaker ; 
the memory of them moves him intensely, and the music 



22 SIIAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

grows grave and slow with the burden of feeling, the 
weight of gathered tears ; it sounds like a dead-march 
heard in the distance. If these losses had been Shak- 
speare's, such facts should have had some interpretation. 
Mr. Brown thus summarises the two sonnets : 

30. When I grieve at past misfortunes, the thinking of you 
restores rny losses and ends my sorrows, 

31. All those friends whom I have supposed dead, lie hidden, 
in you. All that they had of me is yours, and I view their 
beloved images in you. 

A theory which requires this sort of support must be in 
a perilous way ! Again, in the Sonnets on Absence, Mr. 
Brown does not suspect that there are and must be two 
speakers : one who is a traveller abroad on a distant 
shore, at ' limits far remote,' and who speaks most of 
these sonnets when he is from home and away from his 
love; whilst the other, in sonnet 39, speaks of the absence 
of this speaker, and says what a torment his absence 
would be, but that the ' sour leisure oives sweet leave ' 
to write about him, and make one person twain by 
6 praising him here who doth hence remain.' Thus, 
we have the writer who speaks at home, and another 
person who speaks abroad from over sea. 

Again, this is Mr. Brown's rendering of sonnet 70 : 

The slander of others shall not harm you. On the contrary, 
while you remain good, it will but prove your worth the more. 
Your having long escaped censure is no security for the future ; 
and your power in the w r orld might be too great, were you 
believed faultless. 

Which reading has not the least likeness to what Shak- 
speare wrote. This sonnet is one of the most valuable 
of the whole series. The anchorage of personality in 
it is assured. And it gives the he point-blank to the 
supposition that the earl had robbed the poet of his 
mistress. If this had been so, he could not have been 



MR. BROWN'S SUPPRESSIONS. 23 

the 'Victor, being charged.' And as Shakspeare is able 
to congratulate the earl in this way, that fully disproves 
Mr. Brown's reading of the story ; something had oc- 
curred ; the earl had been blamed for his conduct ; slan- 
der had been at work. Shakspeare takes part with his 
friend, and says, the blame of others is not necessarily 
a defect in him. The mark of slander has always been 
'the fair,' just as the cankers love the sweetest buds. 
Suspicion attaches to beauty, and sets it off; — it is the 
black crow flying against the sweet blue heaven. It is in 
the natural order of things, that one in the position of the 
earl and having his gifts and graces, should be slandered. 
But, ' so thou be good,' he says, ' Slander only proves thy 
worth the greater, being wooed of Time J What does that 
mean ? but that the earl has met with opposition in his 
love ; has had to wait for its full fruition ; and Slander, in 
talking of him without warrant, will but serve to call 
attention to his patient suffering and heroic bearing under 
this trial and tyranny of Time. So Shakspeare did think 
the earl was slandered, and he accounts for it on grounds 
the most natural. 

He then offers his testimony as to character — 

And thou present'st a pure unstained prime ! 
Thou hast past by the ambush of young days, 
Either not assailed, or victor being charged. 

A singular thing to say, if Mr. Brown's version of the 
earlier sonnets were true. Very singular, and so Mr. 
Brown has omitted it ! Further, the sonnet is a striking 
illustration of the mutual relationship of poet and peer — a 
most remarkable thing that Shakspeare should congratu- 
late the earl for his Joseph-like conduct, and call him a 
'victor.' Very few young noblemen of the time, we think, 
would have considered that a victory, or cared to have 
had it celebrated. Yet this fact, which Shakspeare says 
is to the earl's praise, will not be sufficient to tie up 



24 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Envy, which is always on the loose, seeking for some 
reputation to devour. 

This, again, is Mr. Brown's rendering of the world of 
meaning to be found in sonnet 107 — 

No consideration can controul my true friendship. In spite 
of death itself, I shall live in this verse, and it shall be your 
enduring monument. 

.Now let the reader turn to the sonnet thus paraphrased. 
The historic circumstances and all the most precious par- 
ticulars are lost with such a theory, the believers in which 
are blind to the jewelly sparkle that indicates the lode of 
the meaning in certain lines, rich in hidden treasure. So 
of sonnet 124 ; at Mr. Brown's touch the spirit passes out 
of it, the history of the time fades away, the dates grow 
dim, Shakspeare's meaning is dead, and Mr. Brown wraps 
it in a winding-sheet of witless words. In his account of 
sonnet 117, he takes no notice of four lines, which of 
themselves are sufficient to differentiate the characters and 
lives of Shakspeare and Southampton — 

That I have frequent been ivith unknown minds, 
And given to Time your oivn dear-purchased right ; 
That I have hoisted sail to all the tvinds 
That should transport vie farthest from your sight. 

Here was matter of great 'pith and moment,' but Mr. 
Brown knew not what to make of it. In sonnet 36, Mr. 
Brown professes to find this : ' Perhaps I must not openly 
acknowledge you, lest the resentment I showed, which I 
bitterly lament, should be remembered to your shame ! ' 
And he conjectures — harping on his favourite string — 
that the poet's resentment had been made public. Shak- 
speare wrote nothing of the sort. The speaker in that 
sonnet is the guilty person, wdiatsoever the guilt may be ; 
his are the blots ; so guilty is he, that for the other to 
take notice of him publicly, will be to court dishonour. 



THE PERSONAL READING OF SONNET 36. 25 

4 My bewailed guilt,' is the guilt which I do bewail — am 
sorry for — not which I did bewail and give expression to 
in public. 

Boaden, who is here followed by Gervinus, was driven 
to think that in this 36th sonnet, the poet must lament 
the difference of rank that existed betwixt them, and was 
fearful lest politic reasons might pull them apart. But 
this will not do any way. It is sufficient answer to know 
that this difference in rank had been no barrier to their 
intercourse ; and if the patron had made no obstacle of the 
disparity in station, it would be a gratuitous insult for 
Shakspeare to set it up as one. Nor could he, after the 
secure self-congratulation on this very point in sonnet 25, 
have spoken of the difference of rank as the separating 
spite of Fortune ; for he had expressly sung of the friend- 
ship as a gift beyond all the prizes of Fortune. Nor 
could the poet's lot in life be his ' bewailed guilt.' Also, 
the ' blots' are altogether of a personal character. And 
if the poet had done something so bad as is here implied, 
he would not have the right to say on behalf of both, that 
there was still but one respect, and the love on both sides 
yet remained the same. The sonnet cannot be read by 
such a theory. 

Then Mr. Brown has altogether ignored the discrepan- 
cies betwixt what is recorded of Shakspeare's personal 
character by those who knew him and what has been 
surmised of it by some who have read but never under- 
stood the sonnets. Nor has he hesitated to charge the 
greatest dramatic poet that ever lived with the grossest 
violation of dramatic proprieties poet ever made. He 
has assumed that Shakspeare was capable of mixing 
truth and falsehood in the wildest, most wanton way — as 
though he were a mountebank whose face was like one 
of those elastic playthings for children that may be 
squeezed or stretched into any shape, on purpose to mock 
us with a myriad transformations of appearances. Here 



26 SHAKSPE ARE'S SONNETS. 

are a few expressions thus assumed, without question, to 
have been addressed to a man by the most natural of all 
poets : 

I tell the day to please him, thou art bright, 

And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven ; 

So natter I the swart-complexioned night. 

Sonnet 28. 

Lascivious Grace, in whom all ill well shows, 
Kill me with spites ; yet, we must not be foes. 

Sonnet 40. 

Being your slave, what should I do but tend 
Upon the hours and times of your desire ? 
I have no precious time at all to spend, 
Nor services to do, till you require : 
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour, 
Whilst I, my Sovereign, watch the clock for you, 
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour, 
When you have bid your Servant once adieu. 

Sonnet 57. 
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon 
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure. 

Sonnet 75. 

And prove thee virtuous though thou art forsworn. 

Sonnet 88. 

But what's so blessed fair that fears no blot ? 
Thou may'st be false, and yet I know it not. 

Sonnet 92. 

How like Eves apple doth thy beauty grow, 

If thy siveet virtue answer not thy show. — Sonnet 93. 

As on the finger of a throned Queen 

The basest Jewel will be well esteemed, 

So are those errors that in thee are seen, 

To truths translated. Sonnet 96. 

For nothing this wide universe I call, 
Save thou, my Rose ! in it thou art my all. 

Sonnet 109. 



HIS SUPPOSED UNTRUTHFULNESS TO NATURE. 27 

Mine appetite I never more will grind 

On newer proof to try an older friend. — Sonnet 110. 

Such Cherubins as your sweet self. — Sonnet 114. 

For why should others' false adulterate eyes 

Give salutation to my sportive blood ? — Sonnet 121. 

Thus, it is assumed that Shakspeare, the peerless 
Psychologist, the poet whose observance of natural law 
was infallible, whose writings contain the ultimate of all 
that is natural in poetry, should have sinned grossly 
against nature, in a matter so primal as the illustration of 



sex ! 



Lastly, Mr. Brown remarks of the rival poet in sonnet 
86, ' who this rival poet was is beyond my conjecture ; nor 
does it matter ! ' But it matters much ; for if this poet 
should prove to be Marlowe, that one fact alone would be 
of sufficient force to deal the death-blow to the vaunted 
theory that William Herbert was the ' only begetter' of 
Shakspeare's sonnets ; because Marlowe died in the year 
1593, when Herbert was exactly thirteen years and four 
months of age. And finally, the upholders of this Herbert 
Hypothesis have, in their helpless desperation, been driven 
to assert that the well-known ' sugred sonnets ' of Shak- 
speare, spoken of so pointedly by Meres, as among the 
poet's 'private friends,' in the year 1598, must have been 
lost I The theory did indeed require to be supported 
with an audacity that would stick at nothing ; but what a 
' lame and impotent conclusion ! ' 

Mr. Brown's book leaves the subject just where, he 
found it ; dark and dubious as ever. His theory has 
only served to trouble deep waters, and make them so 
muddy that it was impossible to see to the bottom. 



OF 

THE PERIOD AT WHICH THE EAEEIEE 
SONNETS WERE WEITTEN, 

AND 

THE PERSON TO WHOM THEY ARE ADDRESSED. 



That the greater portion of Shakspeare's sonnets was 
written at too early a period for William Herbert to have 
been the ' begetter,' is capable of positive, absolute, and 
overwhelming proof. First, we have the poet's ' sugred 
sonnets among his private friends,' known to Meres in 
1598. Then we find ample internal evidence to prove 
that the mass of these sonnets are the poet's early work, 
and possess the characteristics of his early composition. 
As Coleridge has remarked, and he did not enter into the 
controversy concerning the ' only begetter,' they have, 
like the ' Venus and Adonis,' and the ' Lucrece,' ' bound- 
less fertility and laboured condensation of thought, with 
perfection of sweetness in rhythm and metre. These are 
the essentials in the budding of a great poet. Afterwards 
habit and consciousness of power teach more ease, prceci- 
pitandum liberum spiritumJ The abundant use of anti- 
thesis also shows J:hat his fancy had more to do with their 
making, than his mature imagination. Besides which, he 
tells us plainly enough that the early sonnets were written 



THE MEANING OF SONNET 26. 20 

with his ' pupil pen.' Sonnet 16 is explicit on this head, 
it is also supported by the way in which he speaks of his 
Muse in sonnet 32. And nothing can be more obvious 
than that sonnet 26 was composed and sent to his friend 
and patron in written embassage, before the poet had 
appeared in print. It is equally evident that this was 
at a time when Shakspeare did not know where his 
success was to be won, or how his ' moving ' on his 
course would be guided, Meanwhile, he asks his 
patron to accept these sonnets in manuscript to 'wit- 
ness duty ' privately, not to ' show his wit ' in public. 
Before daring to address him in a public dedication, 
he will w r ait until his star shall smile on him gra- 
ciously, and his love shall be able to clothe itself in fit 
apparel, that is, when he is ready to put forth a poem 
such as he shall not shrink from offering to his patron in 
public ; the present sonnets being exclusively private ; 
then will he hope to show himself worthy of the friend's 
4 sweet respect,' but till then he will not dare to dress out 
his love for the critical eye of the world, will not lift up 
his head to boast publicly in print of that love in his 
heart which he now expresses in writing. Here are 
three indisputable facts recorded by Shakspeare himself. 
He writes these earlier sonnets with his ' pupil pen ; ' he 
sends them as private exercises before he appears in 
print, and he is looking forward hopefully to the time 
when he may be ready with a w r ork which shall be more 
worthy of his love than are these sonnets — preliminary 
ambassadors that announce his purpose — which work he 
intends to dedicate publicly to the earl, his patron and 
friend, and appear in person ; that is, by name ; where the 
merits of his poetry may be tested, that is, in print. 

Whosoever we may hold to have been the Lord of 
Shakspeare's love here addressed, he would know, 
however much may be hidden from us, whether or 
not the poet was telling the truth; and there can be no 



30 SHAKSPEAKES SONNETS. 

other conclusion for us but that this 26th sonnet, together 
with those to which it is L'Envoy, was presented to the 
patron before the 4 Venus and Adonis ' was publicly dedi- 
cated to the Earl of Southampton, and the poet ventured 
to ascertain how the world would censure him for ' choos- 
ing so strong a prop to support so weak a burden.' 

Mr. Knight, in proof that the earlier series of these 
sonnets must have been written before William Herbert 
was old enough to be the ' begetter,' has instanced a line, 
first pointed out by Steevens, which was printed in a play 
attributed, with poetic warrant, to Shakspeare, entitled 
' The Eeign of King Edward III.' The same line occurs 
in sonnet 94 : — 

Lilies that fester, smell far worse than weeds. 

This drama was published in 1596, after it had been 
sundry times played. It is presumable that the line was 
first used in the sonnet privately, before it appeared in the 
play, as the poetic notions of the sonnet, as well as the 
personal and private friendship, would demand the more 
fastidious taste. If so, this was one of the sonnets in which 
William Herbert could not have been addressed. But I 
do not care to press the argument, nor is it necessary 
to emphasise a single illustration. There are so many in- 
stances of likeness in thought and image betwixt these son- 
nets and certain of the plays as to almost make it a matter 
of indifference whether the lines were used first in the play 
or the sonnet, although I have no doubt that as a point 
of literary etiquette the sonnet would have first choice. 
My examination of both shows that these resemblances 
and repetitions occur most palpably and numerously in 
dramas and sonnets, which I take to have been written 
from 1592 to 1597; they most strongly suggest, if they 
do not prove, both sonnets and plays to have been writ- 
ten about the same period, having the same dress of his 
mind, the composition perhaps running parallel at times. 



SIGNS 01" EARLY WORKMANSHIP. 31 

These plays are the ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' ; Love's 
Labour Lost,' a ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' and ' Eomeo 
and Juliet.' First, we have an indefinable likeness in 
tone and mental tint, which is yet recognisable as are the 
ilowers of the same season. In Shakspeare so great is the 
unity of feeling as it is seen pervading a whole play, that 
whatsoever was going on below would give visible signs 
on the surface whether he was working at a drama or a 
sonnet. Especially if, as I shall have reason to show, the 
same persons were aimed at in both, and in play and 
somiet he was at times working from one and the same 
life-model. Coleridge has said of ' Eomeo and Juliet ' that 
all is youth and spring; it is 'youth with its follies, its 
virtues, its precipitancies ; it is spring Avith its odours, 
flowers, and transciency ; the same feeling commences, 
goes through and ends the play. The old men, the 
Capulets and Montagues are not common old men ; they 
have an eagerness and hastiness, a precipitancy — the effect 
of spring. With Eomeo, his precipitate change of pas- 
sion, his hasty marriage, and his rash death, are all the 
effects of youth. With Juliet, love has all that is tender 
and melancholy in the nightingale, all that is voluptuous 
in the rose, with whatever is sAveet in the freshness of 
spring ; but it ends with a long deep sigh, like the breeze 
of evening.' 

This unity of character and oneness of feeling is so 
perfect in Shakspeare that it not only colours the persons 
in the same play, but I contend that it tinges his Avork, of 
the same period, and that it is most identifiable in the 
spring-time of his poAvers, Avhen the AA^armth of May Avas 
stirring the budding forces, and the music AA^as at its 
sweetest, the imagery most abundantly used, even to re- 
petition. In the earlier sonnets, and in the above-named 
plays certain ideas and figures continually appear and re- 
appear. We might call them by name, as the shadow- 
idea or conceit, the Avar of roses in the red and Avhite of 



32 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

a lady's cheek, the pattern or map-idea, the idea of the 
antique world in opposition to the tender transciency of 
youth, the images of spring used as emblems of mor- 
tality, the idea of engraving on a tablet of steel, the 
canker in the bud, the distilling of roses to preserve 
their sweets, the cloud-kissing hill, and the hill-kissing 
sun with golden face — and many others which were the 
poet's early stock of imagery, the frequent use of which 
shows that it was yet the time of fondling, the honey- 
moon of fancy, the spring of his creative powers. 
But to pass from this indefiniteness to the actual like- 
ness, here are a few passages compared : — 

Even so my sun one early morn did shine 
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow, 
But, out, alack ! he was but one hour mine, 
The region cloud hath masked him from me now. 

Sonnet 33. 

how this spring of love resembleth 
The uncertain glory of an April day, 
Which now shows all the beauty of the Sun, 
And by-and-by a cloud takes all away ! 

Two Gentlemen of Verona, act i., scene 1. 

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate. 
Which to repair should be thy chief desire. 

Sonnet 10. 

thou, that dost inhabit in my breast, 
Leave not the mansion so long tenantless, 
Lest, growing ruinous, the building fall, 
And leave no memory of what it was. 
Repair me with thy presence Silvia. 

Tivo Gentlemen of Verona. 

For canker Vice the sweetest buds doth love. 

Sonnet 70. 

As in the sweetest buds the eating canker dwells. 

Two Gentlemen of Verona. 



THE LIKENESS TO EARLY PLAYS. 33 

Let them say more that like of hear-say well, 

I will not praise that purpose not to sell. — Sonnet 21. 

Fie painted Rhetoric ! she needs it not : 
To things of sale a seller's praise belongs, — 
She passes praise. 

Love's Labour's Lost, act iv. scene 3. 

But from thine eyes this knowledge I derive. 

Sonnet 14. 

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive. 

Love's Labour's Lost. 

As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie. 

Sonnet 109. 

Hence ever then my heart is in thy breast. 

Love's Labour's Lost. 

I do forgive thy robbery, gentle Thief, 

Altho' thou steal thee all my poverty. — Sonnet 40. 

That sweet Thief which sourly robs from me. 

Sonnet 35. 

me : you Juggler : you canker-worm ! 

Y r ou Thief of Love ! What, have you come by night 

And stolen my Love's heart from him ? 

Hennia to Helena ; Midsummer Night's 

Dream, act iii. scene 2. 

Sweet Roses do not so ; 
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made. 

Sonnet 54. 

Earthlier happy is the Rose distilled, 

Than that, which, withering on the virgin thorn, 

Grrows, lives, and dies in single blessedness. 

Midsummer Night's Dream. 

That is my home of love : if I have ranged, 

Like him that travels, I return again. — Sonnet 109. 

My heart with her but as guest-wise sojourned, 
And now to Helen it is home returned. 

Midsummer Night's Dream. 
D 



34 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward. 

Sonnet 133. 

That thro' thy bosom makes me see my heart. 

Midsummer Nights Dream, act ii. scene 2. 

Truth and Beauty shall together thrive, 

If from thyself to store thou would'st convert : 

Or else of thee this I prognosticate, 

Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date. 

Sonnet 14. 

And tender churl, mak'st waste in niggarding. 

Sonnet 1. 

Oh she is rich in beauty, only poor 

That when she dies with beauty dies her store. 

Then she hath sworn that she will still live chaste ? 

She hath, and in that sparing makes huge ivaste. 

For Beauty starved with her severity, 

Cuts beauty off from all posterity. 

Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 1. 



Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, 
Which, like a j ewel hung in ghastly night, 
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new. 

Sonnet 27. 

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of Night 
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear. 

Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 5, 

When sparkling stars tire 1 not thou gikVst the even. 

Sonnet 28. 

Fair Helena who more engilds the night 
Than all yon fiery oes and eyes of light. 

Midsummer Night 9 8 Dream, act iii. scene 2. 

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven 
Having some business, do entreat her eyes 
To twinkle in their spheres till they return. 

Romeo and Juliet, act i. scene 5. 

1 See note to the Sonnet. 



RESULT OF THE COMPARISON. 35 

Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give. 

Sonnet 37. 

Ah me ! how sweet is love itself possessed, 
When but Love's shadows are so rich in joy ! 

Borneo and Juliet, act v. scene 1. 

Oh what a mansion have those Vices got 
Which for their habitation chose out thee. 

Sonnet 95. 

Oh, that Deceit should dwell in such a Palace ! 

Romeo and Juliet, act iii. scene 2. 

As the result of this comparison, my reading of the 
Sonnets shows that in one or two instances the expression 
must have first appeared in the play. This applies to the 
extracts from sonnet 109. But there the likeness is one 
of a personal character. In most instances my reading 
shows the thought or illustration to have been first 
employed in the sonnets, or that the plays and sonnets 
were being written at the same time. And as four 
of these plays were in all probability produced by the 
year 1596 h the sonnets which I have instanced, together 
with others that belong to the respective stories told, must 
have been written before that date, except in those cases 
where there is a still more particular determining cause 
for the same image or expression being used in both 
sonnet and drama ; that is, when, in each, they apply to 
the same person. This, which is at the root of the matter, 
I shall illustrate in another part of my book. I have 
quoted and said enough to demonstrate that many of the 
sonnets were composed at too early a period for William 
Herbert to have been the inspirer, and the friend of 
Shakspeare who was addressed in them. 

There is strong reason to suppose that the poet began to 

1 These I should date — 'Two Gentlemen of Verona/ 1593 ; 'Lore's 
Labour's Lost/ 1594 ; ' Midsummer Night's Dream/ 1595 ; ' Romeo and 



Juliet/ 1596. 



d 2 



36 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

write the sonnets in which he urges his young friend to 
marry very soon after he had read the ' Arcadia ' of Sid- 
ney. I shall give evidence of this never before adduced, 
and in point of fact it amounts to poetic proof. In Book 
hi. pp. 431, 432, of that work, will be found these argu- 
ments in favour of marriage and children : — 

No, no, my dear niece (said Cecropia), Nature, when you 
were first born, vowed you a woman, and as she made you 
child of a mother ', so to do your best to be mother of a child. 
She gave you beauty to move love ; she gave you wit to know 
love ; she gave you an excellent body to reward love ; which 
kind of liberal rewarding is crowned with an unspeakable 
felicity. For this, as it bindeth the receiver, so it makes happy 
the bestow er. This doth not impoverish, but enrich the giver. 
the comfort of comforts, to see your children grow up, in 
whom you are, as it were eternised ! If you could conceive 
what a heart-tickling joy it is to see your own little ones, with 
awful love come running to your lap, and like little models of 
yourself still carry you about them, you would think un- 
kindness in your own thoughts, that ever they did rebel against 
the measure to it. Perchance I set this blessedness before your 
eyes, as captains do victory before their soldiers, to which they 
must come thro' many pains, griefs, and dangers ? No, I am 
content you shrink from this my counsel, if the way to come 
unto it be not most of all pleasant. 

I know not (answered the sweet Philoclea) what contentment 
you speak of, but I am sure the best you can make of it (which 
is marriage) is a burdenous yoke. 

Ah, dear niece (said Cecropia), how much you are deceived. 
A yoke, indeed, we all bear, laid upon us in creation, which by 
marriage is not increased, but thus far eased that you have a 
yoke-fellow to help draw through the cloddy cumbers of this 
world. widow-nights, bear witness with me of the difference ! 
How often alas, do I embrace the orphan side of my bed, which 
was wont to be imprinted by the body of my dear husband ! 
Believe me, niece, man's experience is woman's best eye-sight. 
Have you ever seen a pure rose-water kept in a crystal glass ? 
Hoiv fine it looks! how siveet it smells while the beautiful 
glass imprisons it ! Break the prison, and let the water take 



SUGGESTIONS FROM SIDNEY'S ' ARCADIA.' 37 

his own course, doth it not embrace the dust, and lose all his 
former sweetness and fairness ? Truly so are we, if we have 
not the stay rather than the restraint of crystalline marriage. 
My heart melts to think of the sweet comfort I, in that happy 
time, received, when I had never cause to care but the care was 
doubled ; when I never rejoiced, but that I saw my joy shine 
in another's eyes. And is a solitary life as good as this ? Then, 
can one string make as good music as a consort f Then, can 
one colour set forth a beauty ? 

Here we discover, crowded into a brief passage, half 
the very arguments, illustrated by several of the very 
same images which Shakspeare has used in his earliest 
group of sonnets. Here, in the lines italicised, is the 
suggestion of sonnet 13 : — 

Dear, my Love, you know, 

You had a Father : let your son say so ! 

The argument of sonnet 11, — 

Which bounteous gift thou should'st in bounty cherish. 

The suggestion of sonnet 6, — 

Which happies those that pay the willing loan. 

Also of the children— ^same sonnet — which are to ' eter- 
nise,' so that death shall leave him ; living in posterity,' — 

When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear. 

Sonnet 13. 

The plea, c O change thy thought,' because it is un- 
kindly, sonnet 10 ; the image of the widow with her 
children who keep her husband's form in mind, sonnet 9 ; 
the ' liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,' sonnet 5, and 
the following out of the illustration in the next sonnet, 
6 Make sweet some vial ; ' and the argument of the ' single 
string ' in sonnet 8, reversely applied : all these are in 
that brief passage of Sidney's prose, and all are used for 
the same purpose, the main difference being that in the 
' Arcadia ' it is a woman speaking to a woman. Various 



38 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

other illustrations might be cited, to show that Shakspeare 
has literally adopted sentiment, idea, and image, one after 
the other, from the ' Arcadia.' His starting-point in the 
first sonnet will be found in these words of Sidney's ; 
' Beauty is a gift which those on whomsoever the heavens 
have bestowed it are without question bound to use it 
for the noble purpose for which it was created ;' — that is, 
of ' increase.' Eeaders of the sonnets will see how large 
a space that sentiment occupies in the first series. Again, 
in the ' Arcadia,' the question is asked, ' Will you suffer 
your beauty to be hidden in the wrinkles ? ' &c. And 
the second sonnet says : — 

When forty Winters shall besiege thy brow, 
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, 
Thy Youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, 
Will be a tattered weed of small worth held ; 
Then, being askt where all thy beauty lies ; 
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, 
To say within thine own deep-sunken eyes, 
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise. 

Here also is a further illustration of sonnet 6 : — 

That indeed is the right happiness which is not only in itself 
happy, but can also derive the happiness to another. 

The object which Shakspeare had in writing these 
early sonnets is so appositely worded in a passage of the 
'Arcadia,' (Book iii. p. 462) as to suggest that the reading 
of that work was one of the immediate incentives to the 
writing of the sonnets. ' The earnest desire I have to see 
these virtues of yours knit fast with such zeal of devotion 
(indeed the best bond) which the most politic wits have 
found to hold man's wit in well-doing.' Shakspeare was 
undoubtedly an adapter of other men's ideas for dramatic 
purposes, but it would be difficult to identify the source 
of so much sequent thought and sentiment as is to be 
found in the present instance. It is essentially the result 



THE TIME AT WHICH THEY WERE BEGUN. 39 

of great admiration, such as belongs to a somewhat youth- 
ful time of life. In borrowing from Sidney he was not 
taking from a poet unknown or unnoticed, but from a 
work that was among the choicest favourites of the age, 
and one of the most widely read. The ' Arcadia ' was 
first published in 1590, and a copy of it would soon be 
in our poet's hands ; we may assume that he would at 
once seize the cue there given, and expand the hints on 
marriage in his first sonnets. It is a kind of unconscious 
plagiarism only possible to the young and immature mind ; 
the effect of a first acquaintanceship, and the warm affec- 
tion felt for a new work. A careful study of the 'Arcadia' 
will reveal how greatly Shakspeare must have loved the 
book, and how deeply its influence dyed his mind 
during those years, from 1590 to 1596, in which a large 
portion of the sonnets was written. Sir Walter Scott just 
reversed the facts, when he fancied that Shakspeare's 
Sonnets had been in the hands of Sidney. 

Thus the sonnets themselves supply proof in various 
kinds of evidence, that a large number of them were 
written too early for William Herbert to have been their 
' begetter,' or the friend who is the object of Shakspeare's 
affection. Many of them were written by the poet's 
' pupil pen ' before he had ventured to appear in public : 
therefore, before he printed in 1593. On other grounds 
I shall show, from internal evidence, that another group 
was written before the death of Marlowe, in the same 
year. Consequently, these must belong to the ' Sonnets 
among his private friends,' which were known to Meres 
in 1598 ; and, as William Herbert did not come to five 
in London till the year 1598, l and was then only eighteen 
years of age, he cannot be the person addressed in these 
Sonnets during a number of years previously ! 

At the outset of our inquiry, and on the very face 
of things, it is patent that William Herbert cannot 

1 Sydney Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 43. 



40 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

be the man whom Shakspeare so anxiously urged to 
marry, to whom he dedicated eternal love ; and to all 
who can fairly weigh the facts, it must be just as evident 
that the Earl of Southampton is the patron and friend 
whom our poet loved, and by whom he was so much be- 
loved. Amongst the few precious personal relics of 
Shakspeare are the short prose epistles in which he in- 
scribes his two poems to the Earl of Southampton. These 
are remarkable revelations of his feeling towards the 
Earl. The first is shaded with a delicate reserve, and 
addressed to the patron ; the second, printed one year 
afterwards, glows out full-hearted in a dedication of per- 
sonal love for the friend. The difference is so great, and 
the growth of the friendship so rapid, as to indicate that 
the ' Venus and Adonis ' was sent to the Earl some time 
before it was printed. 

The dedication runs thus : — 

Eight Honourable, — I know not how I shall offend in de- 
dicating my unpolished lines to your Lordship, nor how the 
world will censure me for choosing so strong a prop to support 
so weak a burthen : only, if your honour seem but pleased, I 
account myself highly praised, and vow to take advantage of all 
idle hours, till I have honoured you with some graver labour. 
But, if the first heir of my invention prove deformed, I shall be 
sorry it had so noble a godfather, and never after ear so barren 
a land, for fear it yield me still so bad a harvest. I leave it to 
your honourable survey, and your honour to your heart's con- 
tent ; which I wish may always answer your own wish, and the 
world's hopeful expectation. 

Your Honour's in all duty, 

William Shakspeare. 

Now, as our poet had distinctly promised in sonnet 26, 
that when he was ready to appear in print and put 
worthy apparel on his love, he would then dare to boast 
how much he loved his patron and friend, and show his 
head, where he might be proved, we cannot but conclude 
that the dedication to the 'Venus and Adonis' is in part 



HIS PROMISES TO SOUTHAMPTON. 41 

fulfilment of the intentions expressed in that sonnet. I 
take the sonnet to be as much a private dedication of the 
poet's first poem, as this epistle was afterwards the public 
one, and hold that in it he as much promised the first 
poem, as in the prose inscription he promises the future 
' Lucrece,' when he vows to take advantage of all idle 
hours till he has honoured the earl with some graver 
labour, and that the 'Venus and Adonis' followed the 
promise of the sonnet, just as one year later the 'Lucrece' 
followed the dedication of the first printed poem to the 
Earl of Southampton. Therefore, the person who was 
privately addressed in 'written embassage' as the lord 
of Shakspeare's love, must be one with him whom the 
poet afterwards publicly ventured to address as such, in 
fulfilment of intentions already recorded. The feeling of 
the earliest sonnets is exactly that of this first public 
inscription ; it is reticent and noticeably modest, whilst 
in each there is an expression that gives the same per- 
sonal image. In the first sonnet, this lord of Shak- 
speare's love is ' the world's fresh ornament ; ' and in the 
first dedication, the poet hopes his young patron may 
answer to the 'world's hopeful expectation.' In both we 
have Hope a-tiptoe at gaze on this new wonder of youth 
and beauty, this freshest blossom of the young nobility. 

In the next year, 1594, Shakspeare dedicated his poem 
of ' Lucrece ' to the Earl of Southampton as follows :— 

The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end, whereof 
this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. 
The warrant I have of your honourable disposition not the 
worth of ray untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. 
What I have done is yours ; what I have to do is yours ; being 
part in all I have devoted yours. 1 Were my worth greater my 

1 In the Malone and Grenville copies this reads ' being part in all I have, 
devoted yours/ which punctuation has been preserved. But it is so obviously 
an error of the press as not even to demand a passing remark. It is ob- 
structive to the sense, and severs what Shakspeare meant to clench by his 
last repetition of ' yours. 



42 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

duty would shoiv greater ; meantime, as it is, it is bound to 
your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with 
happiness. 

Your Lordship's in all duty. 

William Shakspeare. 

Again the dedication echoes the 26th sonnet. ' The 
warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the 
worth of my untutored lines,' and 'were my worth 
greater, my duty would show greater,' are the prose of 
the previous 'to witness duty, not to show my wit.' 
Then we have the 'lord of our poet's love,' to whom his 
service was vowed, his duty bound in 'vassailage,' iden- 
tified in the person of Lord Southampton, to whom 
Shakspeare is in duty bound, as in the sonnet where 
' thy merit hath my duty strongly knit ; ' and to this lord 
the poet has dedicated all that he has done, and all that 
he has to do. Thus we have it recorded in 1594, by 
Shakspeare himself, that the relationship of poet and 
patron was so close, the friendship had so far ripened, 
that Shakspeare could dedicate 'love without end,' and 
he uses these never-to-be-forgotten words : — ' What 1 have 
done is yours ; what I have to do is yours ; being part in 
all I have devoted yours.'' That is, the Earl of South- 
ampton is proclaimed to be the lord of our poet's love, 
' love without end,' — the man to whom he is bound, and 
the patron for whom he has hitherto written, and for 
whom, as is understood betwixt them, he has yet to write. 
'What I have to do is yours ' — so there is work in hand 
— ' being part as you are in all that my duty and love 
have devoted to your service.' What work in hand 
devoted to Southampton can this be, save the sonnets 
which he was then composing ? Here is a promise made, 
which was never fulfilled in any other shape. But Shak- 
speare was not a man to make light of his word. He 
would not give a pledge privately or publicly, and leave 
it unredeemed. He made a promise in the 26th sonnet, 



HIS PUBLIC ALLUSION TO THEM. 43 

which he fulfilled in 1593 with the 'Venus and Adonis.' 
In his inscription to that poem, he makes a further pro- 
mise, this he carries out in dedicating the ' Lucrece ' to 
the Earl of Southampton. In the second public inscrip- 
tion, he speaks still more emphatically of work that he 
has to do for the earl, not like a poet addressing a patron, 
but as a familiar friend alluding to something only known 
amongst friends. It is a public promise respecting work 
that has a private history ; its precise speciality has never 
yet been fathomed, although something marked in the 
meaning has been felt ; it could only have had fulfilment 
in the sonnets, and that in a very particular way. 

As the 'Venus and Adonis' was printed in 1593, we 
may safely assume that the first sonnets, inclusive of the 
26th, were not written later than the year 1592. Shak- 
speare might have met Southampton as early as 1589, for 
hi the June of that year the earl came to London, and 
entered himself as member of Gray's Inn. The young 
earl's fondness for plays is well known, and his step-father, 
Sir Thomas Heneage, being Treasurer of the Chamber and 
Vice-Chamberlain of Her Majesty's Household, as well as 
Captain of the Guard to the Queen, his immediate access 
to players and playwrights would be easy; his good word 
in their favour would be eagerly sought. 

But this was not an ordinary case of a poet in search of 
a patron. Shakspeare must have kept his poem by him 
some years after it was written before he printed it. He 
caUs it the ' first heir of his invention,' at a time when he 
was known to have written some plays, and had a hand 
in others. This does not look as though he had been an 
eager seeker of a patron ; and I hold that sonnet 25 tells 
us how the earl had sought out the poet who ' unlooked 
for joys ' in that he ' honours most ' — the acquaintanceship 
and friendship of one so much unlike the ordinary patrons 
of literature in those days. 

Taking the year 1592, then, as the date of the first 



44 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

group of sonnets, we shall find the young earl of South- 
ampton's age precisely reckoned up in sonnet 16, — 

Now stand you on the top of happy hours, 

which shows us that the youth has sprung lightly up the 
ladder of his life, and now stands on the last golden round 
of boyhood ; he is at the top of his 4 teens.' The Earl of 
Southampton was born October 6th, 1573, consequently 
in 1592 he was nineteen years of age. 

The very first sonnet addresses one who is the c world's 
fresh ornament,' — that is, the budding favourite at Court, 
the fresh grace of its circle, the latest representative there 
of youthful spring ; ' the expectancy and rose of the fair 
State ! ' Southampton was, in truth, the ' child of State,' 
under the special protection of the Court. He was recom- 
mended to Her Majesty's notice by the loss of his father 
at so early an age, and by the quiet service of his step- 
father, who was an old servant of the Queen's, as weU as 
favoured with the best word of his guardian, Burleigh, 
who at one time hoped to bring about a marriage betwixt 
Southampton and his own granddaughter. We shall see 
further, that such was his place in Her Majesty's regards, 
that an endeavour was made by Sir Fulke Greville and 
others, to get the Earl of Southampton installed as royal 
favourite in the stead of Essex. ' There was a time,' says Sir 
Henry Wotton, 1 sometime secretary to the Earl of Essex, 
'when Sir Fulke Greville (Lord Brook), a man intrinsicaUy 
with him (Essex), or at the least, admitted to his melan- 
choly hours, either belike espying some weariness in the 
Queen, or perhaps (with little change of the word, though 
more in the danger), some wariness towards him, and 
working upon the present matter (as he was dexterous 
and close), had almost superinduced into favour the Earl 
of Southampton, which yet being timely discovered, my 

1 Reliquice Wotbonian<£ } p. 163. 



SOUTHAMPTON AS FAVOURITE 45 

Lord of Essex chose to evaporate his thoughts in a sonnet 
(being his common way), to be sung before the Queen 
(as it was) by one Hales, in whose voice she took some 
pleasure ; whereof the couplet, methinks, had as much of 
the Hermit as of the Poet.' I suspect that Wotton has not 
gone quite to the root of the affair, and that the real 
ground on which the motion of Sir Fulke Greville was 
made, was a strong feeling of personal favour on the part 
of Her Majesty towards the young Earl of Southampton ; 
this to some extent is implied in the fact recorded, 
but there was more in it than Wotton had seen from the 
one side. It is difficult to define what this royal favour 
meant, or what was the nature of Her Majesty's affec- 
tion, but it most assuredly existed, and was shown, and 
Essex manifested his jealousy of.it, as in the cases of 
Southampton and Mountjoy. Perhaps it was an old 
maid's passion for her puppies ! In judging of Elizabeth's 
character, we must remember that some of her richest, 
most vital feelings had no proper sphere of action, though 
their motion was not necessarily improper. She did 
not live the married life, and Nature sometimes plays 
tricks when the vestal fires are fed by the animal passions, 
that are thus covered up, but all aglow ; these will give 
an added warmth to the imagination, a sparkle to the eye, 
and a youth to the affections in the later years of life, 
such as may easily be misinterpreted. I am not raising 
any scandal against Elizabeth, when, supported by the 
suggestive hint of Wotton, I conjecture that the persistent 
opposition of the Queen to Southampton's marriage may 
have had in it a personal feeling which, under the circum- 
stances, could have no other expression than in thwarting 
the wedded happiness of others. 

It is in this sense of the new favourite at Court, that I 
read — 

The World's fresh ornament 
And only herald of the gaudy spring, 



46 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

and find in it another feature whereby we can identify 
the Earl of Southampton as the person addressed. 

Next — and here we feel an endearing touch of Shak- 
speare's nature — the youth is so evidently fatherless^ that 
it seems strange it should have been hitherto overlooked. 
The plea all through the first sonnets is to one who is the 
sole prop of his house, and the only bearer of the family 
name ; hence the importance of marrying, on which the 
poet lays such stress. It seems to me that the first 
sonnet opens with an allusion to the early death of the 
earl's father : — 

From fairest creatures we desire increase, 
That thereby Beauty's rose might never die, 
But as the riper should by time decease, 
His tender heir, might bear his memory ! 

In sonnet 10 he is charged with not inclining his ear 
to the advice given to him that he should marry. 
Thus :— 

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate, 
Which to repair should be thy chief desire. 

We find the same use made of the verb to ruinate in 
Henry VI., part hi. act 5 : — 

I will not ruinate my father's house. 

And in the absence of Pericles one of the lords says — 

This kingdom is without a head, 
Like goodly buildings left without a roof. 

Of course the roof would not need repairing if it were 
not going to decay. Accordingly we find that Southamp- 
ton's father — head of the house — died in 1581, ere the 
young earl was quite eight years old, and within four 
years of that time his elder brother died. Again in 
sonnet 13 the poet urges — 

Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, 
Which husbandry in honour might uphold ? 



THE PERSON ADDRESSED IS FATHERLESS. 47 

And, although aware that the lines may not be con- 
fined to the literal reading, I cannot avoid thinking that 
the underlying fact was in the poet's mind when in the 
same sonnet he wrote — 

Dear my love, you know 
You had a father ; let your son say so. 

Also in sonnet 3 he tells the earl — 

Thou art thy Mother's glass, and she, in thee, 
Calls back the lovely April of her prime. 

There is no mention of his having a father ; there is an 
allusion to his having had one, and the mother is referred 
to as though she were the only living parent. Shakspeare 
could not speak of the earl's likeness to his father, who 
had died before the poet came to London ; he is forced to 
make use of the ' mother's glass,' when the father, had 
there been one in existence, is demanded by the heredi- 
tary nature of the argument. Also, it makes greatly in 
favour of my reading that some of the arguments taken 
from Sidney's prose have been altered precisely to suit the 
case as put by me. The speaker in the ' Arcadia ' says, 
' Nature made you child of a mother ' (Philoclea's mother 
' Lettice Knollys ' was then living), but Shakspeare says, 
6 you had a father ' (the Earl of Southampton's father 
being dead). The description is also differentiated by the 
' tender heir,' who, ' as the riper should by time decease,' 
might ' bear his memory,' and by the house-roof going to 
decay, ' which to repair ' by ' husbandry in honour,' 
should be the chief desire of the person addressed. 
Thus, we have the Earl of Southampton identified as the 
lord of Shakspeare's love, and the object of these early 
sonnets by his exact age at the time when Shakspeare 
speaks of appearing soon in print, by his position as the 
' fresh ornament ' of the Court world and Court society, 
and by the fatherless condition which gave a weightier 



48 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

emphasis to the poet's argument for marriage, a more 
paternal tone of anxious interest to his personal affection. 
To revert for a moment to the words of Meres, it is 
obvious that the ' private friends ' of Shakspeare alluded 
to must have had as much to do with the critic's mention 
as the poet had ; it would be made on their account as 
much as on Shakspeare's. Who else could prove the 
opinion recorded ? And certainly there was no living 
patron of literature at the time more likely to elicit the 
public reference of Meres than Henry Wriothesley, Earl 
of Southampton. 

On going a little further afield we may glean yet more 
evidence that the Earl of Southampton is the object of 
these sonnets. ' Thy poet,' Shakspeare calls himself in 
sonnet 79, and one of the earl's two poets in sonnet 83. 
Whose poet could he have been but Southampton's either 
before or after the dedication of his two poems? Of 
whom, save Southampton, should he say — 

Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem, 

Sonnet 100. 

when it was that earl who had so esteemed the poets lays? 
To whom, except this noble fellow and personal friend, 
could he speak of his sonnets as the poor returns, 

The barren tender of a poets debt ? 

Sonnet 83. 

which is a most palpable acknowledgement of the earl's 
munificence — good, even for a thousand pounds. More- 
over, we have in sonnet 78, the recognition of the earl 
after publishing, just as we have him pointed out in 
sonnet 26, before the poet had printed. ' Thine eyes 
that taught the dumb on high to sing ! ' These must 
have belonged to the man who caused the poet to speak 
aloud for the first time in public. In sonnet 108 he says 
his love is great, ' even as when first I hallowed thy fair 



SOUTHAMPTON THE LORD OF SIIAKSPEARE'S LOVE. 49 

name.' Whose name did he hallow or honour save that 
of Southampton ? Again in sonnet 102 : — 

Our love was new and then but in the spring, 
"When I was wont to greet it with my lays. 

What love but that betwixt this earl and Shakspeare did 
the poet ever greet with his lays? And sonnet 105 tells 
us that up to the time at which it was written, the affec- 
tion must have been undivided ; and the patron of both 
sonnets and poems must have been one and the same 
person. For — 

All alike my songs and praises be, 
To one, of one, still such, and ever so. 

But I shall not only show that the Earl of Southampton 
was the lord of Shakspeare's love, and the ' dear friend ' 
of these sonnets, the budding favourite at court, the 
fatherless youth of nineteen, the patron to whom Shak- 
speare sent ' what silent love had writ ' before he publicly 
dedicated his ' love without end ; ' those sonnets that were 
the dumb presagers of his speaking breast, and as such 
preceded and heralded the spoken thought and feeling of 
his public inscriptions. I shall also show how Southamp- 
ton alone could have been spoken of as becoming the 
'tenth Muse' of sonnet 38, not in the beginning of the 
sonnets, but after many of them had been begotten, and 
prove how he only could be a part in what Shakspeare had 
devoted to him. -And lastly, I shall show that whether the 
sonnets be addressed to the object of them by Shakspeare 
himself, or spoken dramatically, it is the character of 
Southampton and that alone, with its love of change, its 
shifting hues, its passionate impetuosity, its spirit restless as 
name, its tossings to and fro, its hurrying here and there 
to seek in strife abroad the satisfaction denied to him in 
peace at home, that we shall find reflected all through the 
larger number of them, and Southampton only who is 
congratulated in sonnet 107 on having escaped his doom 
of imprisonment for life, through the death of the Queen, 

E 



LIFE AND CHAKACTEB 



OF 



HENKY WKXGTHESLEY, 

EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 



The name of Southampton was once well known on a 
past page of our rough island story ; his swaling plume was 
looked to in the battle's front, and recognised as worn by 
a natural leader of fighting men. He was of the flower 
of England's chivalry and a close follower of Sir Philip 
Sidney in heading the onset and breaking hardily on the 
enemy with a noble few, without pausing to count 
numbers or weigh odds. 

With a most natural aptitude for war, he never had 
sufficient scope : one of the jewels of Elizabeth's realm 
did not meet with a fit setting at her hand ; a bright 
particular star of her constellation was dimmed and 
diminished through a baleful conjunction. But he has 
a rich reprisal in being the friend of Shakspeare, be- 
loved by him in life, embalmed by him in memory ; 
once a sharer in his own personal affection, and for ever 
the partaker of his earthly immortality. 

Henry Wriothesley was the second of the two sons of 
Henry, the second earl of the name. His mother was the 
daughter of Anthony Brown, first Viscount Montague. 
The founder of the family was Thomas Wriothesley, 
our earl's grandfather, a favourite servant of Henry VIII., 



' HONOUR IN HIS PERFECTION.' 51 

who granted to him the Promonstratensian abbey of 
Tichfield, Hants, endowed with about 280/. per year in 
1538, creating him Baron Tichfield about the same time, 
and Earl of Southampton in 1546. He died July 30, 
1550. A rare work entitled ' Honour in his Perfection,' 
by G. M., 4 to, 1624, 1 contains the following notice of 
our Southampton's ancestors: — 'Next (0 Britain!) read 
unto thy softer nobility the story of the noble house 
of Southampton ; that shall bring new fire to their 
bloods, and make of the little sparks of honour great 
flames of excellency. Show them the life of Thomas 
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who was both an 
excellent soldier and an admirable scholar ; who not 
only served the great king, his master, Henry VIII. 
in his wars, but in his council chamber ; 2 not only in the 
field but on the bench, within his courts of civil justice. 
This man, for his excellent parts, was made Lord 
Chancellor of England, where he governed with that 
integrity of heart, and true mixture of conscience and 
justice, that he won the hearts of both king and people. 

' After this noble prince succeeded his son, Henry, Earl 
of Southampton, a man of no less virtue, prowess, and 
wisdom, ever beloved and favoured of his prince, highly 
reverenced and favoured of all that were in his own rank, 
and bravely attended and served by the best gentlemen of 
those countries wherein he lived. His muster-roll never 
consisted of four lacqueys and a coachman, but of a 
whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentle- 

1 ' Honour in his Perfection ' supposed by Malone to have "been written by 
Gervase Markham. But Gervase was accustomed to write his name Jarvis 
or Iarvis. He signs his sonnets dedicatory to his tragedy of Sir Richard 
Grenville, his dedication to the ' Poem of Poems or Sion's Muse ' and his 
contributions to ' England's Helicon' with the initials J. M. not G. M. I 
rather think that < Honour in his Perfection ' was written by Griffith or 
Griffin Markham, the brother of Gervase. He served under the Earl of 
Southampton in Ireland, as Colonel of Horse, and was an intimate personal 
friend. 

2 As Secretary of State. 

e2 



52 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

men and yeomen. He was not known in the streets by 
guarded liveries but by gold chains ; not by painted 
butterflies, ever running as if some monster pursued 
them, but by tall goodly fellows that kept a constant 
pace both to guard his person and to admit any man to 
their lord which had serious business. This prince could 
not steal or drop into an ignoble place, neither might do 
anything unworthy of his great calling ; for he ever had - 
a world of testimonies about him.' This earl was attached 
to Popery, and a zealous adherent to the cause of Mary, 
Queen of Scots ; which led to his imprisonment hi the 
Tower in 1572. He died October 4, 1581, at the early age 
of thirty-five, bequeathing his body to be buried in the 
chapel of Tichfield Church, where his mother had been 
interred, his father having been buried in the choir of 
St. Andrew's Church, Holborn ; and appointing that -200/. 
should be distributed amongst the poor within his several 
lordships, to pray for his soul and the souls of his 
ancestors. 

'When it pleased the divine goodness to take to his 
mercy this great earl, he left behind to succeed him 
Henry, Earl of Southampton, his son (now living), being 
then a child. But here methinks, Cinthius aurem vellet, 
something pulls me by the elbow and bids me forbear, for 
flattery is a deadly sin, and will damn reputation. But, shall 
1 that ever loved and admired this earl, that lived many 
years where I daily saw this earl, that knew him before 
the wars, in the wars, and since the wars — shall I that 
have seen him endure the worst malice or vengeance that 
sea, tempests, or thunder could utter, that have seen him 
undergo all the extremities of war ; that have seen him 
serve in person on the enemy — shall I that have seen 
him receive the reward of a soldier (before the face of 
an enemy) for the best act of a soldier (done upon the 
enemy) — shall I be scared with shadows ? No ; truth 
is my mistress, and though I can write nothing which 



SOUTHAMPTON'S EAELY YEAHS. ■ 53 

can equal the least spark of fire within him, yet for her 
sake will I speak something which may inflame those that 
are heavy and dull, and of mine own temper. This earl 
(as I said before) came to his father's dignity in child- 
hood, spending that and his other younger times in the 
study of good letters (to which the University of Cam- 
bridge is a witness), and after confirmed that study with 
travel and foreign observation' He was born October 6, 
1573. His father and elder brother both died before he 
had reached the age of twelve years. On December 11, 
1585, he was admitted of St, John's College, Cambridge, 
with the denomination of Henry, Earl of Southampton, 
as appears by the books of that house ; on June 6, 1589, 
he took his degree of Master of Arts, and after a resi- 
dence of nearly five years, he finally left the University for 
London. He is said to have won the high eulogies of his 
contemporaries for his uncommon proficiency, and to 
have been admitted about three years later to the same 
degree, by incorporation, at Oxford. 

The Inns of Court, says Aulicus Coquinarias, were al- 
ways the place of esteem with the Queen, who considered 
that they fitted youth for the future, and were the best 
antechambers to her Court, And it was customary for 
the nobility, as well as the most considerable gentry of 
England, to spend some time in one of the Inns of Court, 
on purpose to complete their course of studies. Soon 
after leaving the University, the young earl entered him- 
self a member of Gray's Inn, and on the authority of a 
roll preserved in the library of Lord Hardwicke, he is said 
to have been a member so late as the year 1611. Malone 
was inclined to believe that he rather was admitted a 
member of Lincoln's Inn, to the chapel of which society 
the earl gave one of the admirably painted windows, in 
which his arms may be yet seen. 

One of the earliest notices of the earl in the calendar of 






54 • SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

State Papers, 1 gives us the note of preparation for the 
memorable year of the 'Armada,' in which the encroaching 
tide of Spanish power was dashed back broken, from the 
wooden walls of England. ' June 14th,' we read, ' the Earl 
of Southampton's armour is to be scoured and dressed up 
by his executors ! ' In consequence of his father's death, 
the young earl became the ward of Lord Burghley. He 
was, as he said on his trial, brought up under the Queen. 
Sir Thomas Heneage, his stepfather, had been a favourite 
servant of the Queen from his youth ; made by her, 
Treasurer first, of her Chamber, and then Yice-Cham- 
berlain ; appointed in 1588 to be Treasurer at War of the 
armies to be levied to withstand any foreign invasion of 
the realm of England; and successor to Walsingham in 
the office of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 
in 1590. 

October 14th, 1590, Mary, Countess of Southampton, 
writes to Burghley, and thanks him for the long time he 
had entrusted her son with her. She now returns the 
earl, and hopes that Burghley will so dispose of him, that 
his exercises be such as may and must grace persons of 
his quality. He only is able to work her son's future 
happiness. 2 

It appears that Burghley had contemplated the marriage 
of the earl with his granddaughter, for, on the 15th July, 
1590, Sir Thomas Stanhope writes to Lord Burghley and 
assures him that he had never sought to procure the 
young Earl of Southampton in marriage for his daughter, 
as he knew Burghley intended a marriage between him 
and the Lady Yere. And on the 19th September, same 
year, Anthony Viscount Montague writes to Lord Burghley 
to the effect that he has had a conversation with the Earl 
of Southampton as to his engagement of marriage with 
Burghley 's granddaughter. The Countess of Southampton 

1 Domestic Series of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1581-1590, p. 417. 

2 Calendar of State Papers, lb. p. 693^ 



SOUTIIAMrTON'S CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE. 55 

the earl's mother, and Montague's daughter, is not aware 
of any alteration in her son's mind. 1 The son's mind was 
changed, however ; the lady was destined only to play the 
part of Rosaline until Juliet appeared ; the impression in 
wax was doomed to be melted when once the real fire of 
love was kindled. 

About this time the frankness of the earl's nature and 
the ardour of his friendship flashed out in a character- 
istic act of reckless generosity. Two of his young friends 
had got into trouble ; the provocation is not known, 
but they had broken into the house of one Henry 
Long, at Draycot in Wiltshire, and, in a struggle, Long 
was killed. These were the two brothers, Sir Charles 
and Sir Henry Danvers. They informed the earl that a 
life had been unfortunately lost in an affray, and threw 
themselves under his protection. He concealed them for 
some time in his house at Tichfield, and afterwards con- 
veyed them to France, where Sir Charles Danvers became 
highly distinguished as a soldier under Henry IV. 
He returned to England in 1598, having with great diffi- 
culty obtained the Queen's pardon, and his personal at- 
tachment to the Earl of Southampton caused him to lose 
his head on Tower Hill, in March, 1601. Sir Henry lived 
for many years after his brother's death ; he was created 
Baron Danvers by King James L, in the first year of his 
reign, and by King Charles I., Earl of Derby. 

The young Earl of Southampton became so great a 
favourite at Court and was noticed so graciously by Her 
Majesty, as to excite the displeasure and jealousy of the 
Earl of Essex. As in the case of Sir Charles Blount, 
Essex appears to have personally resented the favour 
shown by the Queen to Southampton, and, we are told 
that emulations and differences arose betwixt the two 
earls, who were rivals for Her Majesty's affection. Of 
this we get a glimpse in the story told by Wootton. Also 

1 Calendar of State Papers, p. 688. 



56 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the favours, the rivalry, and the consequent personal 
differences, are implied in the following note of Eowland 
White's, in the 'Sydney Memoirs,' 1 dated Oct. 1st, 1595 :— 
'My Lord of Essex kept his bed all yesterday; his Favour 
continues quam diu se bene gesserit. Yet, my Lord of 
Southampton is a careful waiter here, and, sede vacante, 
doth receive favours at her Majesty's hands; all this 
without breach of amity between them — (i.e. the two earls). 
But a new influence was now at work to make the 
rivals friends. The Earl of Southampton had met the 
'faire Mistress Vernon,' and fallen deeply in love with her. 
This affection for the Earl of Essex's cousin, joined the 
hands of the two earls in the closest grasp of friendship, 
which was only relaxed by death. Love for the cousin was 
the incentive for Southampton to cast in his lot with the 
fortunes of Essex, and become the other self of his friend. 
There were reasons why there should be no further breach 
of amity between the two earls. Eight days before the 
date of White's letter just quoted, he had written thus, — 
'My Lord of Southampton doth with too much familiarity 
court the fair Mistress Vernon, while his friends, observing 
the Queen's humours towards my Lord of Essex, do what 
they can to bring her to favour him, but it is yet in vain.' 2 
This lady, who afterwards became Countess of South- 
ampton, was a maid of honour, and a beauty of Elizabeth's 
Court ; she was cousin to the Earl of Essex, and daughter 
of Sir John Vernon of Hodnet, by Elizabeth Devereux, 
Essex's aunt. Shakspeare's acquaintance with Lord and 
Lady Southampton, and consequent knowledge of her 
family belonging to Shropshire, may have led him to 
introduce a Sir John Vernon in ' The First Part of Henry 
IV.' Hodnet is thirteen miles from Shrewsbury, and the 
high road leading to the latter place passes over the plain 
where the battle was fought in which Falstaff performed 

1 Vol. ii. p. 61. 

2 Sydney Memoirs, vol. i. p. 348. 



SOUTHAMPTON IX LOVE WITH ELIZABETH VERNON. 57 

his prodigies of valour for 'a long hour by Shrewsbury 
clock.' 

Bowland White's statement contains matter of great 
moment to our subject. The Earl of Southampton's love 
for Elizabeth Vernon cost him the favour of the Queen. 
Her Majesty was not to be wrought on, even through 'her 
hurnours towards my Lord of Essex,' to restore the fallen 
favourite to his lost place in her regards. As the breach 
of amity betwixt the two earls had closed, that between 
her Majesty and Southampton continually widened. She 
forbade his marriage, and opposed it in a most implacable 
spirit. Whatsoever may have been the Queen's motive, 
she certainly did not forgive, first the falling in love, and 
next the marriage of the Earl of Southampton with 
Elizabeth Vernon. 

Birch quotes a letter of Antonio Perez, written in Latin, 
dated May 20th, 1595, which contains a reference to the 
Earl of Essex and his ill situation at the time at court, 
and he suggests that the cause probably arose from the 
Queen's displeasure at the share taken by Essex in the 
marriage of his cousin to the Earl of Southampton without 
her Majesty's permission or knowledge. 

But as the marriage did not take place until late 
in 1598, we must look a little further for the mean- 
ing of Mr. Standen's letter to Mr. Bacon, same date, in 
which he relates what he had learned the night before 
among the court ladies, to the effect that the Lady Eich, 
Elizabeth Vernon's cousin, having visited the lady of Sir 
Eobert Cecil at her house, understood that Elizabeth 
Vernon and her ill good man had waited on Sunday two 
hours to have spoken with the Queen, but could not. At 
last Ms tress Vernon sent in word that she desired her 
Majesty's resolution. To which the Queen replied that 
she was sufficiently resolved, but that the next day she 
would talk with her farther. 1 Whatsoever the precise 

1 Birch's Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 238.- 



58 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

occurrence may have been, it is doubtless the one referred 
to by Kowland White. The earl had been courting Mis- 
tress Vernon too warmly for the cloistral coolness of 
Elizabeth's court ; this had reached her Majesty's ears. 
I surmise that the affair was similar in kind to that of 
Ealeigh and Mrs. Throckmorton two or three years be- 
fore, and that the earl and Mistress Vernon were most 
anxious to get married, as their prototypes had done. 
But Elizabeth, either for reasons or motives of her own, 
6 resolved ' they should not. We may consider this to 
have been one of the various occasions on which South- 
ampton was ordered to absent himself from court. We 
shall hear more of the subject from the sonnets. Nearly 
two years later the familiarity became still more apparent, 
in spite of the Queen's attempt to keep the persecuted 
pair apart. The earl was again ordered to keep away 
from the court. The gossips, who had seen the coming 
events casting their shadows before, were at length justi- 
fied. But I am anticipating. 

The exact period of ' travel and foreign observation/ 
alluded to by the author of ' Honour in his Perfection,' is 
unidentifiable, but I conjecture that 'leave of absence' 
and a journey followed the explosion of 1595, when the 
earl had been courting the fair Mistress Vernon ' with too 
much familiarity.' Her Majesty's ' resolve,' expressed in 
reply to the message of Elizabeth Vernon, is sufficiently 
ominous, although not put into words for us. It has been 
stated that the earl was with Essex, as an unattached 
volunteer, at the attack on Cadiz, in the summer of 1596. 
This, Malone asserted on grounds apparently strong. In 
the Catalogue of the MSS. in the library of the Earl of Den- 
bigh — ' Catalogi Librarum Manuscriptorum Anglise,' &c, 
vol. ii. p. 36, where the following notice is found : 'Diana 
of Montemayor (the first part), done out of Spanish by 
Thomas Wilson, Esq., in the year 1596, and dedicated to 
the Earl of Southampton, who was then upon the Spanish 



THE QUEEN'S OPPOSITION. 50 

voyage with my Lord of Essex' 1 He could not, however, 
have left England in company with Essex, as on the 1st 
of July, 1596, the earl executed at London a power of 
attorney to Kichard Eounching to receive a thousand 
pounds of George, Earl of Cumberland, and John Taylor 
his servant. Also it may be calculated that if the earl 
had been in action on that occasion, we should have heard 
of his part in the fight. But it is quite probable that he 
followed in the wake of the expedition, and the legal 
transaction has the look of an arrangement or agreement 
such as might have been made on leaving England in haste. 
Being too late to share in the storming of Cadiz, which 
was taken before Southampton could have left London, 
he may have joined his friend Eoger Manners, Earl of 
Rutland, who was then making a tour of France, Italy 
and Switzerland. 2 Prom the time that the Queen for- 
bade his marriage with Elizabeth Vernon, and ordered 
him to absent himself from the court, up to the death of 
Essex, it was a period of great trial and vexation for a 
proud impetuous spirit like his. Thwarted in his dearest 
wish to wed the woman he loved, and constantly checked 
in his public career, he became more and more impatient 
when struck by the stings and arrows of his cruel and 
outrageous fortune, that so pitilessly pursued him. Out- 
breaks of his fiery blood, and ' tiffs ' with his mistress 
were frequent. He appears to have got away from Lon- 
don as often as he could ; though most anxious to do 
England service he 'hoisted sail to every wind' that would 
blow him the farthest from her. He was most unlike his 

1 It has been a subject of wonder how Shakspeare got at the Diana of 
Montemayor, to take so much of his ' Two Gentlemen of Verona ' from it. 
But as both he and Wilson were under the patronage of Southampton, there 
can be nothing more likely than that Shakspeare had a look at "Wilson's 
translation long before it was printed. Attention had been drawn to the 
drama by Sidney's translations from it made for Lady Rich. 

2 It was on the occasion of the Earl of Rutland's journey in 1595 that 
Essex addressed to him the long letter of advice which may be found in the 
Harleian MSS (4888. 16.) 



60 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

stepfather, Sir Thomas Heneage, who had been for so 
many years a docile creature of the court, and who, as 
Camden tells us, was of so spruce and polite address, that 
he seemed purely calculated for a court. Southampton 
had not the spirit that bows as the wind blows. He 
was more at home in mail than in silken suit. Like 
the i brave Lord Willoughby,' he could not belong to the 
Beptilice of court life. He had a will of his own, a spirit 
that stood erect and panted for free air, and that trick of 
the frank tongue that so often attends the full heart of 
youthful honesty. The words of Mr. Eobert Markham, 
written to John Harington, Esq., somewhat apply to the 
Earl of Southampton : ' I doubt not your valour, nor 
your labour, but that damnable uncovered Honesty will 
mar your fortunes.' And the Queen's persistent opposi- 
tion to his love, her determination to punish him for 
disobedience and wilfulness, kept him on the continual 
fret, and tended to turn his restlessness into reckless- 
ness, his hardihood into fool-hardihood, his daring into 
dare-devilry, the honey of his love into the very gall of 
bitterness. 

Eowland White, writing to Sir Eobert Sidney at Flush- 
ing, March 2, 1597, says, 1 ' My lord of Southampton hath 
leave for one year to travel, and purposes to be with you 
before Easter. He told my lady that he would see you 
before she should.' The earl was for leaving England 
again in his discontent and weariness. But the famous 
Island Voyage was now talked of, and Southampton was 
not the man to lose a chance if there were fighting to be 
done. He had some difficulty in obtaining a command, 
but was at length appointed to the ' Garland.' Eowland 
White, in his letter of April 9, says, 4 My lord of South- 
ampton, by 200 means, hath gotten leave to go with them' 
(Essex and Ealeigh). The influence here exerted in 

1 Sydney Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 24. 



THE ISLAND VOYAGE. 61 

favour of the earl was Cecil's. Whatsoever the feeling 

o 

of Cecil toward Essex, he proved himself on various 
occasions to have been the true good friend of the Earl 
of Southampton. ' The Earl was made commander of 
the " Garland," ' to quote once more from ' Honour in his 
Perfection,' and was ' Vice-admiral of the first squadron. 
In his first putting out to sea (July, 1597) he saw all the 
terrors and evils which the sea had power to show to 
mortality, insomuch that the general and the whole fleet 
(except some few ships of which this earl's was one) were 
driven back into Plymouth, but this earl, in spite of 
storms, held out his course, made the coast of Spain, and 
after, upon an adviso, returned. The fleet, new reinforced, 
made forth to sea again with better prosperity, came to 
the islands of the Azores, and there first took the island 
of Pi all, sacked and burnt the great town, took the high 
fort which was held impregnable, and made the rest of 
the islands, as Pike, Saint George's, and Gratiosa, obe- 
dient to the general's service. Then the fleet returning 
from Fiall, it pleased the general to divide it, and he went 
himself on the one side of Gratiosa, and the Earl of South- 
ampton, with some three more of the Queen's ships and a 
few small merchant ships sailed on the other; when early 
on a morning by spring of day, this brave Southampton 
lit upon the King of Spain's Indian fleet, laden with trea- 
sure, being about four or five and thirty sail, and most of 
them great warlike galleons. They had all the advantage 
that sea, wind, number of ships, or strength of men could 
give them ; yet, like a fearful herd they fled from the fury 
of our earl, who, notwithstanding, gave them chase with 
all his canvas. One he took, and sunk her ; divers he 
dispersed, which were taken after, and the rest he drove 
into the island of Tercera, which was then unassailable.' 
Camden continues the story. ' When the enemy's ships 
had got off safely to Tercera, Southampton and Vere at- 
tempted to crowd into the haven with great boats at mid- 



62 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

night, and to cut the cables of the nearest ships, that they 
might be forced to sea by the gusts which blew from shore. 
But the Spaniards kept too strict a watch, and the project 
miscarried.' 1 After the English had taken and 'looted' 
the town of Villa Franca, the Spaniards finding that most 
of them had returned to their ships, made an attack in 
great force upon the remaining few. The Earls of South- 
ampton and Essex stood almost alone, with a few friends, 
but these received the attack with such spirit that many 
of the Spaniards were slain, and the rest forced to re- 
treat. On this occasion Southampton fought with such 
gallantry, that Essex in a burst of enthusiasm knighted 
his friend on the field, ' ere he could dry the sweat from 
his brows, or put his sword up in his scabbard.' 

Sir William Monson, one of the admirals of the ex- 
pedition, took a different view to that of Essex of what 
Southampton had done on this voyage. He considered 
that time had been lost in the chace, which might have 
been better employed. On his return to England South- 
ampton found the Queen had adopted the opinion of 
Monson rather than that of Essex, and he had the morti- 
fication of being met with a frown of displeasure for 
having presumed to pursue and sink a ship without direct 
orders from his commander, instead of being welcomed 
with a smile for having done the only bit of warm work 
that was performed on the ' Island Voyage.' This was 
just like the earl's luck all through, after his fatal falling 
in love with Elizabeth Vernon. His intimacy with Essex 
was a secondary cause of his misfortunes. 

The Queen often acted toward Essex in the spirit of 
that partial mother instanced by Fuller, who when her 
neglected son complained that his brother, her favourite, 
had hit and hurt him with a stone, whipped him for 
standing in the way of the stone which the brother 
had cast ! 

1 Camden's Elizabeth, p. 598. 



A BKOIL IN COURT. G3 

On this occasion the quarrels of Essex and Ealeigh 
were visited on the head of Southampton. Fortune ap- 
peared to have an unappeasable spite against him ; the 
world seemed bent upon thwarting his desires and cross- 
ing his deeds. Do what he might it was impossible for 
him to be in the right. There is little marvel that he 
grew of a turbulent spirit, or that his hot temper broke 
out in frequent quarrels ; that he should wax more and 
more unsteady, much to the sorrow and chagrin of his 
mistress, who wept over the ill reports that she heard of 
his doings, and waited, hoping for the better days to 
come when he should pluck his rose x from the midst of 
the thorns, and wear it on his breast in peaceful joy. 

In January, 1598, a disgraceful affair occurred in court 
which became the subject of common scandal. On the 
19th of that month Eowland White writes : — ' I hard of 
some unkindness should be between 3000 (the JSTo. in his 
cypher for Southampton) and his Mistress, occasioned by 
some report of Mr. Ambrose Willoughby. 3000 called 
hym to an account for yt, but the matter was made 
knowen to my Lord of Essex, and my Lord Chamberlain, 
who had them in Examinacion ; what the cause is I could 
not learne, for yt was but new ; but I see 3000 full of dis- 
contentments.' 2 And on the 21st of January he says : — 
6 The quarrel of my Lord Southampton to Ambrose Wil- 
loughby grew upon this : that he with Sir Walter Ealeigh 
and Mr. Parker being at primero (a game of cards), in the 
Presence Chamber ; the Queen was gone to bed, and he 
being there as Squire for the Body, desired them to give 
over. Soon after he spoke to them again, that if they 
would not leave he would call in the guard to pull down 
the board, which, Sir Walter Ealeigh seeing, put up his 



1 For nothing tliis wide universe I call, 
Save Thou, niy Rose, in it thou art my all. 

Sonnet 109. 

2 Sydney Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 82-3. 



64 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

money and went his ways. But my Lord Southampton 
took exceptions at him, and told him he would remember 
it ; and so finding him between the Tennis Court wall 
and the garden shook him, and Willoughby pulled out 
some of his locks. The Queen gave Willoughby thanks 
for what he did in the Presence, and told him he had 
done better if he had sent him to the Porter's Lodge to 
see who durst have fetched him out.' 1 

The Earl also had a quarrel with Percy, Earl of 
Northumberland, which produced a challenge, and nearly 
ended in a duel. Percy sent copies of the papers to Mr. 
Bacon with a letter, in which he gives an account of the 
affair. The sole point of interest in this quarrel lies in 
the likelihood that Touchstone, in 'As you like it,' is 
aiming at it when he says : — ' 0, Sir ; we quarrel in print 
by the book ; as you have books for good manners. I 
will name you the degrees : the first, the retort courteous ; 
the second, the quip modest ; the third, the reply churl- 
ish ; the fourth, the reproof valiant ; the fifth, the counter- 
beck quarrelsome ; the sixth, the lie with circumstance ; 
the seventh, the lie direct. All these you may avoid but 
the lie direct ; and you may avoid that too with an " If." 
I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel ; 
but when the parties were met themselves, one of them 
thought but of an " If" as " If" you said so, then I said 
so ; and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your if 
is the only peace-maker ; much virtue in an if 

We may find an illustration of ' the Percy's ' temper in 
a letter of Mr. Chamberlain's to Mr. Winwood in 1613, 
which relates that Percy has, while in the Tower, beaten 
Euthven, the Earl of Gowrie's brother, for daring to 
cross his path in the garden. So that when we read of 
Southampton's quarrels, it will only be fair to remember 
who are his fellows in fieryness. The Percy appears to 
have had his match, however, in his own wife, Dorothy 

1 Sydney Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 82-3. 



THE EARL OFFERS HIS SWORD TO HENRY IV. OF FRANCE. 05 

Devereux, the sister of Lady Eich and Robert Earl of 
Essex. In one of their domestic quarrels the Earl of 
Northumberland had said he would rather the King of 
Scots were buried than crowned, and that both he and 
all his friends would end their lives before her brother's 
great God should reign in his element. To which the 
lady spiritedly replied, that rather than any other save 
James should reign king of England she would eat their 
hearts in salt, though she were brought to the gallows 
immediately. x 

In spite of his quarrels, the scuffle with Willoughby 
and the consequent scandals, the earl attended to his 
duty as a senator from October 24, 1597, till the end of 
the session, February 8, 1598. He also entered upon an 
engagement to accompany Mr. Secretary Cecil on an 
embassy to Paris. A few extracts from Rowland White's 
letters will continue the story. 

January 14, 1598. — '.I hear my Lord Southampton 
goes with Mr. Secretary to France, and so onward on his 
travels, which course of his doth extremely grieve his 
mistress, that passes her time in weeping and lamenting.' 

January 28, 1598.—' My Lord Southampton is now 
at Court, who, for awhile, by her Majesty's command, 
did absent himself.' 

January 30.—' My Lord Compton, my Lord Cobham, 
Sir Walter Raleigh, my Lord Southampton, do severally 
feast Mr. Secretary before he depart, and have plays and 
banquets.' 

February 1. — ' My Lord of Southampton is much 
troubled at her Majesty's strangest usage of him. Some- 
body hath played unfriendly parts with him. Mr. 
Secretary hath procured him licence to travel. His fair 
mistress doth wash her fairest face with too many tears. 

1 Birch's Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 514. Perhaps Shakspeare had heard of 
this when he made Beatrice exclaim, ' O God, that I were a man ! I would 
eat his heari, in the market-place.' 

F 



W SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

I pray God his going away bring her to no such infirmity 
which is as it were hereditary to her name.' 

February 2, 1598. — 'It is secretly said that my Lord 
Southampton shall be married to his fair mistress.' 

February 12. — ' My Lord of Southampton is gone and 
hath left behind him a very desolate gentlewoman that 
hath almost wept out her fairest eyes. He was at Essex 
House with 1000 (Earl of Essex), and there had much 
private talk with him for two hours in the court below.' 

On March 17, Cecil introduced his friend, at Angers, to 
Henry IV., telling that illustrious monarch that Lord 
Southampton 'was come with deliberation to do him 
service.' His Majesty received the earl with warm 
expressions of regard. Here again Southampton met 
with the customary frustration of his hopes ; he had 
come for the express purpose of serving under so famous a 
commander, and was eager for the campaign, which was 
suddenly stopped by the peace of Vervins. There was 
nothing to be done except to have a look at Paris, and 
there he stayed some months. 

July 15, 1598, Thomas Edmondes to Sir Eobert Sidney 
writes : — ' I send your lordship certain songs, 2 which were 
delivered me by my Lord Southampton to convey to your 
lordship from Cavelas. His lordship commendeth himself 
most kindly to you, and would have written to you if it 
had not been for a little slothfulness.' 

The same writer fixes the time of the earl's return. 
He writes, November 2, 1598 : — -'My Lord of Southamp- 
ton that now goeth over can inform your lordship at 
large of the state of all things here.' 2 

But, according to Mr. Chamberlain's letter of August 
30, 1598, the Earl of • Southampton must have made a 

1 Very possibly some of the sonnets sent by Shakspeare to the earl in 
Paris. There were two familiar visitors at Sir Eobert Sidney's house who 
were much interested in the sonnets of Shakspeare, yiz. ; William Herbert 
and Lady Eich. 

2 Sydney Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 102-4. 



SOUTHAMPTON'S SECRET MARRIAGE. 67 

special journey from Paris for the purpose of effecting 
his marriage, and been on his way back when accom- 
panied to Margate by Sir Thomas Germaine. Elizabeth 
Vernon had been compelled to retire from the Court. 
Chamberlain writes : — ' Mistress Vernon is from the Court 
and lies at Essex House (at Wanstead, where the Earl of 
Essex was the fair Elizabeth's companion in disfavour). 
Some say she hath taken a venue l under her girdle, and 
swells upon it ; yet she complains not of foul play, but 
says my Lord of Southampton will justify it, and it is 
bruited underhand that he was lately here four days in 
great secret of purpose to marry her, and effected it 
accordingly.' A week later the same writer says : — 
' Yesterday the Queen was informed of the new Lady of 
Southampton and her adventures, whereat her patience 
was so much moved that she came not to chapel. She 
threateneth them all to the Tower, not only the parties, 
but all that are partakers of the practice. It is confessed 
the earl was here, and solemnised the act himself, and 
Sir Thomas Germaine accompanied him on his return to 
Margate.' In his next letter Mr. Chamberlain says : — ' I 
now understand that the Queen hath, commanded the 
novizia countess the sweetest and best appointed lodging 
in the Fleet ; her lord is by commandment to return upon 
his allegiance with all speed. These are but the begin- 
nings of evil ; well may he hope for that merry day on 
his deathbed, which I think he shall not find on his 
wedding couch.' 2 That the earl was also thrust into prison 
on his return we may infer from the words of Essex in 

1 Venue or venew. Steevens and Malone differed respecting this word, 
which, occurs in ' Love's Labour's Lost.' 

Armado. ' A sweet touch ! a quick veneiv of wit ! ' 
Steevens argued that it was the technical term for a bout or set-to at the 
fencing school. Malone held that it meant simply a hit. Douce maintained 
that venew and bout equally denote a hit in fencing.. Mr. Chamberlain uses 
the word to signify a hit ; the allusion is to being hit below the belt, which 
was, and is, reckoned a blow unfairly given. 

2 S. P. 0. 

f2 



68 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

his letter of July 11, 1599 : — ' Was it treason in my Lord 
of Southampton to marry my poor kinswoman, that 
neither long imprisonment nor any punishment besides 
that hath been usual in like cases can satisfy or appease ? 
Or will no kind of punishment be fit for him but that 
which punisheth not him but me, this army, and this poor 
country Ireland ? ' When a young man marries, says an 
Arab adage, the demon utters a fearful cry. And Eliza- 
beth seems to have been almost as profoundly affected on 
such occasions. 

This fact of Southampton's love for Elizabeth Vernon, 
and the Queen's opposition to their marriage, is the chief 
point of interest in the earl's life, because it is one of the 
main facts in relation to the sonnets of Shakspeare. It is 
my conclusion that this pair of ill-starred lovers was 
badly treated by her Majesty. She not only rejected 
everything proposed by Essex for the advancement of his 
friend, but continued, as we shall see, the same spiteful 
policy when Lord Mountjoy wished to advance the 
fortunes of the earl in a wider sphere of action. 

Southampton, Elizabeth Vernon, and their mutual 
friends, tried long and hard to obtain the Queen's consent 
to their marriage, but as she would not give it, and 
showed no signs of relenting, they did the very natural 
thing of getting married without it. This being done, 
what more is there to be said ? It is unfair to talk of the 
earl being licentiously in love with Mistress Yernon when 
the Queen would not grant them the licence. The mar- 
riage certainly took place in one of the later months of 
1598, and the bitterness of the Queen towards Southamp- 
ton was thereby much increased. The Queen was jealous 
and enraged to find any of her favourites loving else- 
where, or sufficiently unloyal to her personal beauty 
to get married. It was so when Hatton, Leicester, and 
Essex married ; but no one of them all was so virulently 



SOUTHAMPTON IN IRELAND. GO 

pursued as the Earl of Southampton. Towards no one else 
was the fire of her anger kept so long aglow. It makes 
one fancy there must have been some feeling of animosity 
betwixt the two Elizabeths, which has not come to the 
surface. 

In 1599 Essex was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland, 
and Southampton accompanied him thither. On their 
arrival Essex made his friend General of Horse. By her 
Majesty's letter to Essex, July 19, 1 we learn that this was 
' expressly forbidden ' by the Queen, and ' it is therefore 
strange to us that you will dare thus to value your own 
pleasing, and think by your own private arguments to 
carry for your own glory a matter wherein our pleasure 
to the contrary is made notorious.' The Queen did not 
intend Southampton to be employed, and after some 
defensive pleadings Essex had to give him up. Before 
resigning his command he had done some little service. 
Sir J. Harington 2 gives us a glimpse of the earl's daring 
and dash in action. June 30, about three miles from 
Arklow, the army had to pass a ford. The enemy was 
ready to dispute or trouble the army in its passage. The 
Earl of Essex ordered Southampton to charge, the enemy 
having retired himself into his strength, a part of them 
casting away their arms for lightness. ' Then the Earl of 
Southampton tried to draw them on to firm ground, out 
of the bog and woodland, and at length he gathered up 
his troop, and seeing it lost time to endeavour to draw 
the vermin from their strength, resolved to charge them 
at all disadvantage, which was performed with that 
suddenness and resolution that the enemy which was 
before dispersed in skirmish had not time to put himself 
in order ; so that by the opportunity of occasion taken 
by the earl, and virtue of them that were with him 

1 S. P. O. 2 Nugcs Antiques, vol. i. p. 287. 



70 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

(which were almost all noble), there was made a notable 
slaughter of the rebels.' Here, too, we find fighting by 
Southampton's side a brother of Elizabeth Vernon, who 
managed to kill his man previous to his own horse going 
down in the bog and rolling a-top of him. The Earl of 
Southampton was such a leader of horse as could inspire 
the rebels with a salutary respect, and cause them to 
watch warily all his motions. It was in one of these 
skirmishes that the Lord Grey pursued a small body of 
the enemy in opposition to Southampton's orders. He 
was punished with a night's imprisonment, or rather, as 
Mr. Secretary Cecil explained in a letter to Sir H. Neville, 
6 the confinement was merely for order sake, Grey being 
a colonel, and Southampton a general.' But my Lord 
Grey took it as a personal affront, and brooded over it 
bitterly, seeking to make it a cause of quarrel. 

The earl remained by the side of Essex some time 
after his command had been taken from him. He was 
present at a council of war held at the Castle of Dublin 
August 21, and was one of the chief men that accom- 
panied Essex at his conference with Tyrone early in 
September, 1599, when a truce was concluded. We 
next hear of him in London by White's letter of 
October 11 : — ' My Lord Southampton and Lord Eutland 
came not to Court ; the one doth but very seldom, they 
pass away the time in London merely in going to plays 
every day. 1 Southampton's sword had been struck from 
his hand, the Earl of Eutland had been recalled, as if the 
policy at Court was to lame Essex through his personal 
friends. Lord Grey, too, we find, is observed to be much 
discontented. His ill-feeling towards Southampton is 
smouldering, soon to break out in a desperate attack 
upon Southampton with drawn sword in open day and 
public street. He also challenged Southampton. Eow- 

1 Sydney Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 132, 



SOUTHAMPTON'S QUARRELS. 71 

land White, January 24, 1600, tells his correspondent 
that Lord Grey hath sent the Earl of Southampton a 
challenge which ' I hear he answered thus — that he 
accepted it ; but for the weapons and the place being by 
the laws of honour to be chosen by him, he would not 
prefer the combat in England, knowing the danger of the 
laws, and the little grace and mercy he was to expect if 
he ran into the danger of them. He therefore would let 
him know, ere it were long, what time, what weapon, and 
what place he would choose for it.' The violent temper 
and quarrelsome disposition of Southampton have been 
much dwelt upon. I repeat, it is only just that we should 
note the spirit of his personal opponents ; and here we 
may recall the last words of Sir Charles Danvers on the 
scaffold. Amongst others present was the Lord Grey. 
Sir Charles asked pardon of him, and acknowledged he 
had been 'ill affected to him purely on the Earl of 
Southampton's account, towards whom the Lord Grey 
professed absolute enmity. ,' 

In 1600 the Queen had neither forgotten nor forgiven 
the marriage of Southampton. Mountjoy was now made 
Lord-Deputy of Ireland, and Southampton hoped to ac- 
company him in his first campaign. Again we have 
recourse to our agreeable court gossip, Eowland White : — 

Jan. 24, 1600.— ' My Lord of Southampton goes over 
to Ireland, having only the charge of 200 foot and 100 
horse.' He was not permitted to accompany the Lord- 
Deputy to Ireland, and on February 9, we find that, ' My 
Lord of Southampton's going is uncertain, for it is thought 
that her Majesty allows it not.' Lord Mountjoy landed 
in Ireland February 26, and on March 15, Wliite says : — 
' My Lord of Southampton is in very good hope to kiss 
the Queen's hand before his going into Ireland. Mr. 
Secretary is his good friend and he attends it ; his horses 
and stuff are gone before.' March 22 : — ' My Lord of 
Southampton hath not yet kissed the Queen's hands, but 



72 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

attends it still/ March 29 : — ' My Lord of Southampton 
attends to-rnorrow to kiss the Queen's hands ; if he miss 
it, it is not like he shall obtain it in any reasonable time. 
I hear he will go to Ireland, and hopes by doing of some 
notable service to merit it at his return.' April 19 : — 
' My Lord of Southampton deferred his departure for one 
week longer, hoping to have access to her Majesty's pre- 
sence, but it cannot be obtained ; yet she very graciously 
wished him a safe going and returning.' April 26 : — 
' My Lord of Southampton went away on Monday last, 
Sir Charles Danvers brought him as far as Coventry.' 
May 3 : — ' My Lord Southampton upon his going away 
sent my Lord Grey word that what in his first letter he 
promised, he was now ready in Ireland to perform.' 

On June 8, the Lord-Deputy wrote to Master Secretary 
concerning the state of Connaught, wherein nothing was 
surely the Queen's but Athlone by a provident guard, 
and Gralway by their own good disposition, wishing that 
the government of that province might be conferred on 
the Earl of Southampton (to whom the Lord of Dunkellin 
would more willingly resign, and might do it with greater 
reputation to himself, in respect of the earl's greatness) 
rather than upon Sir Arthur Savage (who, notwithstanding, 
upon the Queen's pleasure again signified, was shortly 
after made governor of that province). His lordship 
protested that it was such a place as he knew the earl 
would not seek, but only himself desired this, because he 
knew the earl's aptness and willingness to do the Queen 
service, if he might receive such a token of her favour ; 
justly commending his valour and wisdom, as well in 
general as in the late particular service in the Moyry, 
when the rear being left naked, he by a resolute charge 
with six horse upon Tyrone at the head of 220 horse, 
drove him back a musket shot, and so assuring the rear, 
saved the honour of the Queen's army. 1 It was as useless, 

1 Mory son's History of Ireland, ftook i. chap. 2, p. 173. 



INTIMACY OF SOUTHAMPTON AND ESSEX. 73 

however, for Mountjoy to plead on behalf of Southampton 
as it had been for Essex in the previous year. Her 
Majesty was unrelenting. And in August, about the 25th, 
Southampton left the Irish war and sailed into England. 
There was some rumour of his going into the Low Coun- 
tries in search of my Lord Grey ; if so, nothing came of 
it. He is said to have been summoned home by Essex. 

White tells us, September 26, 1600:— < The Earl of 
Southampton arrived upon Monday night, and upon 
Wednesday went to his lady who lies at Lees, my Lord 
Eiches; he hath been extreme sick but is now recovered.' 

Such treatment as Southampton had received from the 
Queen was materially calculated to drive him closer to the 
side of his friend Essex, who was then under the Queen's 
sore displeasure, brooding over his discontent. So far 
had her Majesty's petty tyranny been carried, that in the 
March of this year Lord and Lady Southampton, together 
with others of Essex's friends, had been all removed from 
Essex House ; whilst great offence had been taken at 
Southampton and others having entered a house that 
overlooked York Garden, on purpose to salute Essex 
from the window. 

The two earls were drawn together by many ties, by some 
likeness of nature, by strong bonds of personal friendship, 
and links of household love. Southampton was the near- 
est and dearest personal friend that Essex had ; first in all 
matters of vital import and secret service. When Essex 
was consigned to the custody of the Lord Keeper in the 
autumn of 1599, his two most intimate and trusted friends 
were Southampton and Mountjoy ; to these he committed 
the care of his interests. When Southampton, in April, 1600, 
went to join Lord Mountjoy in Ireland, Essex sent letters 
to Mountjoy saying he relied on him and Southampton as 
his best friends and would take their advice in all things. 
It was upon the intercession of Southampton, says Sir 
Henry Wotton, that the fatal tempter, CufFe, was restored 



74 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

to his place after Essex had dismissed him ; and he - so 
working upon his disgraces and upon the vain foundations 
of vulgar breath, which hurts many good men, spun out the 
final destruction of his master and himself, and almost of 
his restorer, if his pardon had not been won by inches.' 

It was at Southampton's residence, Drury House — on the 
site of which now stands the Olympic Theatre — that the 
chief partisans of Essex held their meetings in January, 
1601. And Southampton in his youthful zeal and fervent 
friendship seems to have felt that come what might it was 
his place to dwell with Essex in disgrace, and if need be, 
fall by his side in death. Though what the Essex con- 
spiracy was formed for or amounted to it is very difficult 
to determine. Essex and his sister, Lady Eich, we know 
intrigued for the purpose of bringing James to the throne, 
but that was never put forward on this occasion. 

Lord Mountjoy being under the influence of Lady Eich 
and held captive in her strong toils of grace, was to some 
extent bound up with the cause of Essex. His secretary 
tells us that he was privately professed and privy to the 
earl's intentions, though as these were so vague and full 
of change, the acquiescence of Mountjoy may have been 
very general. According to Sir Charles Danvers, Mount- 
joy had promised that if the King of Scots would head 
the revolution and strike for the throne of England, he 
would leave Ireland defensively guarded and come over 
with 5,000 or 6,000 men, ' which, with the party that my 
Lord of Essex should make head withal, were thought 
sufficient to bring to pass that which was intended.' He 
had afterwards advised the Earl of Essex to have patience 
and wait. Southampton had opposed this march on Lon- 
don. He held it altogether unfit as well in respect of his 
friend's conscience to God and his love to his country, as 
his duty to his sovereign, of which he, of all men, ought 
to have greatest regard, seeing her Majesty's favours to 



ESSEX'S REBELLION. 75 

him (Essex) had been so extraordinary, wherefore he, 
Southampton, could never give his consent to it. 1 

To me the attempt of Essex looks like a too audacious 
endeavour to apply, in a more public way, the rights of 
personal familiarity which he had in some sort acquired 
and so often relied on in private with the Queen. But 
the force and freedom of the personal were on the wane. 
Essex had shown disloyalty to her Majesty's person, which 
was more than disloyalty to her throne. He had said 
the c Queen was cankered, and her mind had become as 
crooked as her carcase.' ' These words,' quoth Ealeigh, 
' cost the earl his head.' Also, there were statesmen 
round the throne who represented the public element, 
which was now rising in power as the life and vigour of 
the royal lioness were ebbing, and they were anxious that 
the personal fooling should cease, and the State policy 
be shaped less by whims and more by fixed principles. 
Else, according to Camden, the so-called conspirators 
were surprised to hear of a trial for treason. They had 
thought the matter would have been let sleep, and that 
the Queen's affection for Essex would cause it to be pri- 
vately settled or kept in the dark. 2 ISTo doubt there were 
some who stood about the earl and urged him on with 
desperate advice, that secretly nursed the wildest hopes 
of what a success might bring forth for them, who also 
calculated that the earl's influence with the Queen would 
tide them over a defeat. 

Southampton had his personal complaint with regard 
to the attack made upon him in the street by Lord Grey, 
and to this he alluded in the course of the parleyings at 
Essex House before the surrender ; but of course he knew 
this was no warrant for his being in arms against his sove- 
reign. With him it was essentially a matter of personal 
friendship ; he acted according to his sense of personal 

1 Examination of Southampton after his arraignment. 
2 Camden's Elizabeth, p. 622. 



76 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

honour, which blinded him to all else. He had told Sir 
Charles Danvers that he would cast in his lot with my 
Lord of Essex, and venture his life to save him. He had 
done all that he possibly could on behalf of a man who 
had lost his head long before it fell from the block. He 
was one of those who in 1599 dissuaded Essex from one 
of his projected attempts, in which he purposed reducing 
his adversaries by force of arms. He opposed the con- 
templated march upon London. He advised the earl's 
escape into France, and offered to accompany him into 
exile and share his fortunes there. He, with Sir Charles 
Danvers, had, as Essex admitted, persuaded the rash 
earl to 'parley with my Lord General.' Evidently he 
had seen all the peril, but thought his place was with 
his friend, no matter what might be their fate. As he 
pleaded on his trial, the first cause of his part in the 
matter was that affinity betwixt him and Essex, 'being 
of his blood, and having married his kinswoman,' so that 
for his sake he would have hazarded his life. He had the 
good sense to see that the ' rising,' as it was called, the 
going into the city, was a foolish thing, and he said so, 
but he continued, ' My sword was not drawn all day.' l 

He urged in his defence, ' What I have by my forward- 
ness offended in act, I am altogether ignorant, but in 
thought I am assured never. If through my ignorance of 
law I have offended, I humbly submit myself to her Ma- 
jesty, and from the bottom of my heart do beg her gra- 
cious pardon. For, if any foolish speeches have passed, I 
protest, as I shall be saved, that they were never purposed 
by me, nor understood to be so purposed, to the hurt of 

1 It was indeed foolish, for such a cause, and such a cry of revolution as 
< For the Queen ! For the Queen ! My life is in danger ! ' were never set up in 
this world hefore or since. Stowe informs us that the wondering citizens, 
not knowing what to make of the cry, fancied that it might be one of joy 
because Essex and the Queen had . become friends again, and that Her 
Majesty had appointed him to ride through London in that triumphant 



TRIAL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 77 

her Majesty's person. I deny that I did ever mean or 
intend any treason, rebellion, or other action against rny 
sovereign or the state ; what I did was to assist my Lord 
of Essex in his private quarrel ; and therefore, Mr. 
Attorney, you have urged the matter very far ; my blood 
be upon your head. I submit myself to her Majesty's 
mercy. 1 know I have offended her, yet, if it please her 
to be merciful unto me I may live, and by my service de- 
serve my life. I have been brought up under her Majesty. 
I have spent the best part of my patrimony in her Majes- 
ty's service, with danger of my life, as your lordships 
know.' Southampton was in his twenty-eighth year 
when he was tried for treason. He had espoused the 
Earl of Essex's cause unwarily, and followed him upon his 
fatal course imprudently. But there was something chi- 
valrous in his self-sacrificing friendship ; a spirit akin to 
that of the Scottish chieftain, who, when the Pretender 
made his personal appeal, saw all the danger, and said, 
' You have determined, and we shall die for you ;' and to 
death they went, proudly open-eyed. 

The historian notes that when my Lord Grey was called 
at the trial, ' the Earl of Essex laughed upon the Earl of 
Southampton, and jogged him by the sleeve,' to call his 
attention to his old ' sweet enemy.' 

Perhaps we shall get at the Earl of Southampton's view 
of the matter, in a letter written by Sir Dudley Carlton 
to Sir Thomas Parry, dated July 3, 1603 ; the remarkable 
words being spoken when and where there was no need 
for the speaker to ' hedge ' on the subject : 

' The Lords of Southampton and Grey, the first night 
the Queen came hither, renewed their old quarrels, and 
fell flatly out in her presence. She was in discourse with 
Lord Southampton touching the Lord of Essex' action, 
and wondered, as she said, so many great men did so 
little for themselves. To which Lord Southampton an- 
swered, that the Queen being made a party against them 9 



78 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

they were forced to yield, but if that course had not been 
taken, there was none of their private enemies, with whom 
their only quarrel was, that durst have opposed themselves. 
This being overheard by the Lord Grey, he would main- 
tain the contrary party durst have done more than they. 
Upon which he had the lie hurled at him. The Queen 
bad them remember where they were.' 1 This was in vain. 
The bickering continued, and they had to be sent to their 
lodgings to which they were committed, with a guard 
placed over them. The King had to settle the quarrel, 
and make peace between them. 

Southampton was condemned to die, and lay in the 
Tower at point of death ; he was- long doubtful whether 
his life would be spared. His friends outside hoped for 
the best, but sadly feared the worst. In a letter to Sir 
George Carew, dated March 4, 1601, Secretary Cecil 
professes to be pleading all he dare, for the ' poor young- 
Earl of Southampton, who, merely for the love of Essex, 
hath been di^awn into this action.' He says that he hardly 
finds cause to hope. It is ' so much against the earl that 
the meetings were held at Drury House, where he was the 
chief, that those who deal for him are much disadvantaged 
of arguments to save him.' Yet ' the Queen is so merci- 
ful, and the earl so penitent, and he never in thought 
or deed offended save in this conspiracy,' that the Secre- 
tary will not despair. At length the sentence was com- 
muted to perpetual imprisonment. 

At the death of the Queen the earl was much visited, 
says Bacon, who was one of the first to greet him, and 
who wrote to assure his lordship that, how little soever 
it might seem credible to him at first (he having been 
counsel against Southampton and Essex on their trial), 
yet it was as true as a thing that God knoweth, that 
this great change of the Queen's death, and the King's 
accession, had wrought in himself no other change to- 

1 Nichollss Progresses of James I. 



r 



SOUTHAMPTON'S RELEASE. 79 

wards his lordship than this, that he might safely be that 
to him now, which he was truly before. 1 We may rest 
assured that Shakspeare was one of the first to greet 
his ' dear boy,' over whose errors he had grieved, and 
upon whose imprudent unselfishness he had looked with 
tears, half of sorrow, and half of pride. He had loved 
him as a father loves a son ; he had warned him, and 
prayed for him, and fought in soul against 'Fortune' on 
his behalf, and he now welcomed him from the gloom of 
a prison on his way to a palace and the smile of a mon- 
arch. This was the poet's written gratulation : 

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul 
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, 
Can yet the lease of my true love control ; 
Supposed as forfeit to a Confined Doom ! 
The Mortal Moon hath her Eclipse endured. 
And the sad Augurs mock their own presage, 
Uncertainties now crown themselves assured, 
And Peace proclaims Olives of endless age. 
Now with the drops of this most balmy time 
My love looks fresh ; and Death to me subscribes, 
Since, spite 'of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, 
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes. 
And thou in this shalt find thy Monument 
When Tyrants' crests and Tombs of Brass are spent. 

Mr. Chamberlain, writing to Dudley Carleton, April 
1603, says, 4 The 10th of this month the Earl of South- 
ampton was delivered out of the Tower by warrant 
from the King,' sent by Lord Kinloss — 'These bountiful 
beginnings raise all men's spirits, and put them in great 
hopes.' Wilson says, 2 4 The Earl of Southampton, covered 
long with the ashes of great Essex his ruins, was sent 
for from the Tower, and the King looked upon him with 
a smiling countenance, though displeasing happily to the 

1 Birclis Elizabeth, vol. ii. p. 500. 

2 History of England, vol. ii. p. 663. 



80 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

new Baron Essingclon, Sir Eobert Cecil, yet it was much 
more to the Lords Cobham and Grey, and Sir Walter 
Ealeigh.' 

Shakspeare's was not the only poetic greeting received 
by the earl as he emerged from the Tower. Samuel 
Daniel hastened to salute him, and give voice to the 
general joy : 

The world had never taken so full note 

Of what thou art, hadst thou not been undone ; 

And only thy affliction hath begot 

More fame, than thy best fortunes could have won : 

For, ever by Adversity are wrought 
The greatest works of Admiration ; 

And all the fair examples of Eenown 

Out of distress and misery are grown. 

How could we know that thou wouldst have endured 
With a reposed cheer, wrong and disgrace ; 

And, with a heart and countenance assured, 

Have looked stern Death and Horror in the face ! 

How should we know thy soul had been secured 
In honest counsels, and in way unbase ; 

Hadst thou not stood to show us what thou wert 

By thy affliction that descryed thy heart. 

John Davies of Hereford also addressed the earl on his 
liberation, and grew jubilant over the rising dawn of the 
new reign, opening on the land with such a smiling pro- 
spect : 

The time for mirth is now, even now, begun ; 
Now wisest men with mirth do seem stark mad, 
And cannot choose — their hearts are all so glad. 
Then let's be merry in our Grod and King, 
That made us merry, being ill bestadd : 
Southampton, up thy Cap to Heaven fling, 
And on the Viol there sweet praises sing ; 
For he is come that grace to all doth bring. 

Southampton was invited to meet the King on his way 



SOUTHAMPTON'S RESTORATION. 81 

to London. In Mcholls's ' Progresses of James I.' 1 we 
read, that ' Within half a mile of Master Oliver Crom- 
well's (our Oliver's uncle), the Bailiff of Huntingdon met 
the King, and there delivered the sword, which his High- 
ness gave to the new-released Earl of Southampton, to bear 
before him. admirable work of mercy, confirming the 
hearts of all true subjects in the good opinion of his 
Majesty's royal compassion ; not alone to deliver from 
captivity such high nobility, but to use vulgarly with great 
favour, not only him, but also the children of his late 
honourable fellows in distress. His Majesty passed on in 
state, the earl bearing the sword before him, as I before 
said he was appointed, to Master Oliver Cromwell's house.' 
His lands and other rights, which had been forfeited 
by the earl's attainder, were now restored, with added 
honours and increase of wealth. He was appointed 
Master of the Game to the Queen, and a pension of 600/. 
per annum was conferred upon his countess. He was 
also installed a Knight of the Garter, and made Captain of 
the Isle of Wight. By a new patent, dated July 21, he 
was again created earl by his former titles. And the first 
bill after the recognition of the King, which was read in 
the parliament that met on the 19th of March, 1604, was 
for restitution of Henry, Earl of Southampton. On the 
4th of this month, Eowland White writes, 'My Lady South- 
ampton was brought to bed of a young lord upon St. 
David's clay (March 1), in the morning ; a saint to be 
much honoured by that house for so great a blessing, by 
wearing a leek for ever upon that day.' 2 On the 27th of 
the same month the child was christened at Court, ' the 
King and Lord Cranbourn with the Countess of Suffolk 
being gossips.' March 30 the earl was appointed Lord 
Lieutenant of Hampshire, together with his friend the 
Earl of Devonshire. These marks of favour were fol- 

1 Vol. i. p. 98. 2 Sydney Memoirs. 



82 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

lowed, in June, 1606, by the appointment of his lordship 
to be Warden of the New Forest (on the death of the 
Earl of Devonshire), and Keeper of the Park of Lindhurst. 
In November, 1607, the earl lost his mother, who had 
been the wife successively of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of 
Southampton, Sir Thomas Heneage, and Sir William 
Hervey. We are told that she ' left the best of her stuff 
to her son^ and the greater part to her husband.' The 
'stuff' consisted of jewellery, pictures, hangings, &c, 
chiefly collected by Sir Thomas Heneage, for the pos- 
session of which the Earl of Arundel ranked him among 
the damned. 

The Earl of Southampton was a very intimate friend of 
the Earl of Pembroke, and both, like the sage Eoger 
Ascham, were sadly addicted to cock-fighting. Eowland 
White records, on the 19th of April, 1605, that 'Pem- 
broke hath made a cock-match with Suffolk and South- 
ampton, for 50£. a battle ;' and May 13 he says, or rather 
sings : — 

The Herberts, every cockpit day, 

Do carry away 

The gold and glory of the day. 

This fellowship in sport led to the quarrel with Lord 
Montgomery, recorded in Winwood's Memorials. 1 South- 
ampton and the wild brother of the Earl of Pembroke 
fell out, as they were playing at tennis, in April, 1610, 
when and ' where the rackets flew about their ears, but 
the matter was compounded by the King without further 
bloodshed.' 

The two earls, Southampton and Pembroke, were 
yoked in a nobler fellowship than that of sport. They 
fought side by side in the uphill struggle which colonisa- 
tion had to make against Spanish influence. They carried 
on the work of Ealeigh when his adventurous spirit beat 
its wings in vain behind the prison bars, and continued it 
1 Vol. Hi. p. 154. 



THE COLONISATION OF VIRGINIA. 83 

after his grey head had fallen on Tower Hill. They both 
belonged to the Company of Adventurers and Planters of 
the City of London for the first colony of Virginia (May 23, 
1609): Southampton being appointed one of the council. 
He became a most active promoter of voyages of disco- 
very, and a vigilant watcher over the interests of the 
colonists. December 15, 1609, the earl writes to Lord 
Salisbury, that he has told the King about the Virginian 
squirrels brought into England, which are said to fly. 
The King very earnestly asked if none were provided for 
him, and whether Salisbury had none for him, and said he 
was sure Salisbury would get him one. The earl says he 
would not have troubled Lord Salisbury on the subject, 
' but that you know so well how he is affected to these toys.' 
A squirrel that could fly being of infinitely more interest 
to James than a colony that could hardly stand alone. 

In 1607 Southampton and Sir Ferdinando Gorges had 
sent out two ships, under the command of Harlie and 
Nicolas. They sailed along the coast of New England, 
and were sometimes well but oftener ill received by the 
natives. They returned to England in the same year, 
bringing five savages back with them. One wonders 
whether Shakspeare's rich appreciation of such a 'find' 
had not something to do with his discovery of Caliban, 
the man-monster. 

It is pretty certain that the earl's adventures as a 
colonizer had a considerable influence on the creation of 
Shakspeare's ' Tempest.' The marvellous stories told of 
' Somers' Island,' called the Wonderful Island, for the 
plantation of which a charter was granted to Southampton, 
Herbert, and others, may have fired the poet's imagination 
and tickled his humour. 

August, 1612, the English merchants sent home some 
ambergris and seed pearls, ' which the devils of the Ber- 
mudas love not better to retain than the angels of Castile 
do to recover.' 

G 2 



84 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

October 27, 1613, a piece of ambergris was found, 
4 big as the body of a giant, the head and one arm want- 
ing ; but so foolishly handled that it brake in pieces, so 
that the largest piece brought home was not more than 
68 ounces in weight' Again, we read that the Spaniards, 
dismayed at the frequency of hurricanes, durst not adven- 
ture there, but called it Dcemoniorum insulam. 

On the 12th of May, 1614, the Earl of Southampton 
supported the cause of his young plantation in Parliament, 
on which occasion Dick Martin, in upholding the Virginian 
colony, so attacked and abused the House that he was had 
up to the bar to make submission. Sir Thomas Gates had 
just come from Virginia, and reported that the plantation 
must fall to the ground, if it were not presently helped. 

The earl lived to see the colony founded and flourish- 
ing. In 1616 Virginia was reported by Sir Thomas Dale 
to be ' one of the goodliest and richest kingdoms in the 
world, which being inhabited by the King's subjects, will 
put such a bit into our ancient enemy's mouth as will curb 
his haughtiness of monarchy.' And in 1624, the year of 
the earl's death, the colony was so far thriving that it had 
6 worn out the scars of the last massacre,' and was only 
pleading for a fresh supply of powder. The good work 
was crowned. ' The noble and glorious work of Virginia,' 
as it was called by Captain Bargrave, whose estate had 
been ruinecL in its support, and his life afterwards dedicated 
to the { seeing of it effected.' 

The earl of Southampton has left his mark on the 
American map ; his name will be found in various 
parts of Virginia. Southampton Hundred is so called 
after his title ; and the Hampton Eoads, where Presi- 
dent Lincoln met the envoys from the South, to broach 
terms of reconciliation and peace, were so named after 
the friend and patron of Shakspeare. 

Our American friends were oblivious of much that was 
stirring in the mother's memory, when the heart of 



SOUTHAMPTON'S NAME IN AMERICA. 85 

England thrilled to the deeds done by Virginians in the 
late civil wars. In spite of her face being set sternly 
against slavery, she could not stifle the cry of race, and 
the instinct of nature, — could not but remember that 
these were the descendants of her heroic adventurers, the 
hardy pioneers of her march round the globe, who laid 
down their weary bones when their work was done, and 
slept in the valleys of old Virginia, to leave a living voice 
that cries from the mountains and the waters with the voice 
of her own blood, and in the words of her own tongue. 

As the friend of Essex, whom King James delighted to 
honour, the Earl of Southampton received many marks of 
royal favour, although he was not one who was naturally 
at home in such a court. On June 4, 1610, he acted as 
carver at the splendid festival which was given in honour 
of young Henry's assumption of the title of Prince of 
Wales. In 1613 he entertained the King at his house in 
the New Forest. A letter written by him to Sir Ealph 
Win wood, 1 August 6, 1613, gives us a glimpse of his 
feelings at the time. He was one of the friends chosen 
to act on the part of Essex' son Eobert, in the matter of 
devising the means of a divorce. And he writes with 
evident disgust at the conduct of affairs : ' Of the Nullity 
I see you have heard as much as I can write ; by which 
you may discern the power of a King with J udges, for of 
those which are now for it, I knew some of them, when I 
was in England, were vehemently against it. I stay here 
only for a wind, and purpose (God willing) to take the 
first for England ; though, till things be otherwise settled, 
I could be as well pleased to be anywhere else ; but the 
King's coming to my House imposeth a necessity at this 
time upon me of returning.' In 1614, he made a visit to 
the Low Countries, and was with Lord Herbert of Cher- 
bury at the siege of Eees, in the duchy of Cleves. In 
1617, Southampton accompanied James on his visit to 

1 Winwood Memorials, vol. iii. p. 475. 



86 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Scotland. And, from a letter of the earl's to Carleton, 
April 13, 1619, we learn that he has been chosen a privy 
councillor. He remarks, that he will rather observe his 
oath by keeping counsel than giving it ; much is not to 
be expected from one ' vulgar councillor,' but he will 
strive to do no hurt. It is said that he had long 
coveted this honour. June 30, 1613, the Eev. Thos. 
Larkin, writing to Sir Thos. Puckering, had said : — 
6 My Lord of Southampton hath lately got licence to 
make a voyage over the Spa, whither he is either already 
gone, or means to go very shortly. He pretends to 
take remedy against I know not what malady ; but his 
greatest sickness is supposed to be a discontentment con- 
ceived that he cannot compass to be made one of the 
Privy Council ; which not able to brook here well at 
home, he will try if he can better digest it abroad.' 

If he had looked up to this as the consummation of his 
wishes, he could have found but little satisfaction, and no 
benefit, from it when realised. He was unable from prin- 
ciple to acquiesce in the measures of the Court. Those 
who had kept the Council Chamber closed against him for 
so long had by far the truer instinct. He is spoken of by 
Wilson as one of the few gallant spirits, that aimed at 
the public liberty more than their own personal interests 
or the smiles of Court favour. This writer says 1 : — 
'Southampton, tho' he were one of the King's Privy 
Council, yet was he no great Courtier. Salisbury kept 
him at a bay, and pinched him so, by reason of his 
relation to old Essex, that he never flourished much 
in his time ; nor was his spirit (after him) so smooth shod 
as to go always at the Court pace, but that now and then 
he would make a carrier that was not very acceptable to 
them, for he carried his business closely and slily, and was 
rather an adviser thaman actor.' 

1 Life and Reign of King James I., p. 736. 



SOUTHAMPTON'S OPPOSITION TO THE COURT. 87 

He now joined the small party that was in opposition to 
the Court, his ardent temperament often kindling into 
words, which were as scattered sparks of fire in inflaming 
the little band that thwarted the meaner and baser wishes 
of the King and his ministers. Contrary to the desire of 
Government, he was chosen Treasurer of the Virginia 
Company. Also, in parliament, he stood forward to with- 
stand the unconstitutional views of ministers and fa- 
vourites. Early in the year 1621 he made a successful 
motion against illegal patents ; and Camden mentions 
that during the sitting of the 14th of March ' there was 
some quarrelling between the Marquis of Buckingham, 
and Southampton and Sheffield, who had interrupted him, 
for repeating the same thing over and over again, and 
that contrary to received approved order in parliament.' 

The Prince of Wales tried to reconcile them. Buck- 
ingham, however, was not the man to forget or forgive an 
affront. And those on whom he fixed his eye in enmity 
sooner or later felt the arm of his power, although the 
blow was at times very secretly dealt. Twelve days after 
the parliament had adjourned, Southampton was com- 
mitted to the custody of the Dean of Westminster, to be 
allowed no intercourse with any other than his keeper 
(Sir Eichard Weston). June 23, Sir Eichard Weston 
declined to be the earl's keeper, and Sir W. Parkhurst 
was appointed. 

The Eev. Joseph Mead writes to Sir Martin Stutville, 
June 30 of this year : — ' It is said that this week the 
Countess of Southampton, assisted by some two more 
countesses, put up a petition to the King, that her lord 
might answer before himself ; which, they say, his Majesty 
granted.' 1 

Various others were imprisoned, about the same time, for 
speaking idle words. Among the rest, John Selden was 
committed to the keeping of the Sheriff of London ; he 

1 Court and Times of James, vol. ii. p. 263. 



88 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

was also set at liberty, on the same day as the Earl of 
Southampton, July 18, 1621. In a letter of proud sub- 
mission sent to the Lord Keeper Williams, Southampton 
promises to ' speak as little as he can,' and ' meddle as 
little as he can/ according to ' that part of my Lord 
Buckingham's advice ! ' In these stormy discussions and 
early grapplings with irresponsible power, we hear the 
first mutterings of the coming storm that was to sweep 
thro' England, and feel that, in men like Southampton, the 
spirit was stirring which was yet to spring up, full-statured 
and armed, for the overthrow of weak prince and fatal 
parasites, to stand at last as a dread avenger flushed with 
triumph, smiling a stern smile by the block at White- 
hall. His imprisonment did not repress Southampton's 
energies or lessen his activity. In the new parliament, 
which assembled on the 9th of February, 1624, he was on 
the committee for considering of the defence of Ireland ; 
the committee for stopping the exportation of money ; 
the committee for the making of arms more serviceable. 
He was a true exponent of the waking nation, in its 
feeling of animosity against Spain, and of disgust at the 
pusillanimous'conduct of James, who would have tamely 
submitted to see his son-in-law deprived of the Palatinate. 
The aroused spirit of the nation having compelled the 
King to enter into a treaty with the States- General, 
granting them permission to raise four regiments in this 
country, Southampton obtained the command of one of 
them. ' This spring,' says Wilson, ' gave birth to four 
brave Eegiments of Foot (a new apparition in the English 
horizon), fifteen hundred in a Eegiment, which were 
raised and transported into Holland (to join the army 
under Prince Maurice) under four gallant colonels : the 
Earl of Oxford, the Earl of Southampton, the Earl of 
Essex, and the Lord Willoughby.' This was a fatal 
journey for the Earl, the last of his wanderings, that 
was to bring him the 'so long impossible Eest.' 'The 



DEATH OF SOUTHAMPTON. 89 

winter quarter at Kosenclale,' Wilson writes, ' was also fatal 
to the Earl of Southampton, and the Lord Wriothesley 
his son. Being both sick there together of burning fevers, 
the violence of which distemper wrought most vigorously 
upon the heat of youth, overcoming the son first ; and the 
drooping father, having overcome the fever, departed from 
Eosendale with an intention to bring his son's body into 
England, but at Berghen-op-Zoom he died of a lethargy, 
in the view and presence of the relator.' The dead son 
and father were both brought in a small bark to England, 
and landed at Southampton ; both were buried at Titch- 
fielcl, on Innocents' day, 1624. 

' They were both poisoned by the Duke of Bucking- 
ham,' says Sir Edward Peyton, in his ' Catastrophe of 
the House of the Stuarts ' (p. 360), as plainly appears, 
he adds, ' by the relation of Doctor Eglisham.' This 
relation of Eglisham's will be found in the ' Forerunner 
of Eevenge.' 1 The doctor was one of King James's 
physicians for ten years. His statement amounts to this — 
that the Earl of Southampton's name was one of those 
which were on a roll that was found in King Street, 
Westminster, containing a list of those who were to be 
removed out of Buckingham's way. Also, that when the 
physicians were standing round the awfully disfigured 
body of the dead Marquis of Hamilton (another supposed 
victim of Buckingham's), one of them remarked, that ' my 
Lord Southampton was blistered all within the breast, as 
my Lord Marquis was.' 

This statement made me curious enough to examine 
Francis Glisson's report of the post mortem examination 
of the Earl of Southampton's body : it is in the British 
Museum ; 2 and I found it to be so suspiciously reticent, that 
the silence is far more suggestive than what is said. It 
contains no mention whatever of the condition of the blood 

1 Harleian Miscellany, vol. ii. pp. 72-7. 

2 Vide Ayscough'scatalogiie of MS. 



90 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

or the brain, the spleen or bowels, the heart or liver, 
the stomach or lungs. The bladder and kidneys are the 
only parts described. An altogether unsatisfactory report, 
that looks as though it were a case of suppressed evidence. 
This, coupled with the lethargy noticed by Wilson, and 
the known implacable enmity of Buckingham, does at least 
give colour to the statements of Sir Edward Peyton, and 
Dr. Eglisham. But for us it will remain one of the many 
secrets — for which John Felton, 4 with a wild flash in the 
dark heart of him,' probed swiftly and deeply with his 
avenging knife, — to be known hereafter. 

One cannot but feel that the Earl of Southampton did 
not get adequate scope for his energies under James any 
more than in the previous reign, and that he should have 
lived a few years later, for his orb to have come full circle. 
He might have been the Eupert of Cromwell's horsemen. 
He was not a great man, nor remarkably wise, but he was 
brave, frank, magnanimous, thoroughly honourable, a true 
lover of his country, and the possessor of such natural 
qualities as won the love of Shakspeare. A comely noble 
of nature, with highly finished manners ; a soldier, whose 
personal valour was proverbial ; a lover of letters, and a 
munificent patron of literary men. 

Chapman, in one of his dedicatory sonnets prefaced to 
the Iliad, calls the Earl ' learned,' and proclaims him to 
be the ' choice of all our country's noble spirits.' Eichard 
Braithwaite inscribes his ' Survey of History, or a Nursery 
for Gentry,' to Southampton, and terms him ' Learning's 
select Favourite. ' Nash calls him • a dear lover and che- 
risher, as well of the lovers of poets as of poets themselves.' 
Florio tells us that he lived for many years in the earl's 
pay, and terms him the 'pearl of peers.' He relieved 
the distress of Minshew, author of the ' Guide to 
Tongues.' Barnaby Barnes addressed a sonnet to him, 
in 1593, in which he expressed a hope that his verses 
4 if graced by that heavenly countenance which gives 



THE EARL'S PATRONAGE OF LITERATURE. 91 

light to the Muses, may be shielded from the poisoned shafts 
of envy.' Jervais Markham, in a sonnet attached to his 
poem on the death of Sir 'Kichard Gr en ville, addresses 
Southampton thus : — 

Thou, the laurel of the Muses hill, 

Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen. 1 

Wither appears to have had some intention of cele- 
brating the earl's marked virtues and nobility of character 
as exceptionally estimable in his time, for, in presenting 
him with a copy of his ' Abuses stript and whipt,' he tells 

him, — 

I ought to be no stranger to thy worth, 
Nor let thy virtues in oblivion sleep : 
Nor will I, if my fortunes give me time. 

In the year 1621, the earl had not ceased his patronage 
of literary men, as is shown by the dedication to him of 
Thomas Wright's ' Passions of the mind in general.' 

Many elegies were sung over the death of Southampton, 
of which the following, by Sir John Beaumont, is the 
best : — 

I will be bold my trembling voice to try, 
That his dear name in silence may not die ; 
The world must pardon if my song be weak, 
In such a cause it is enough to speak. 
Who knew not brave Southampton, in whose sight 
Most placed their day, and in his absence night ? 
When he was young, no ornament of youth 
Was wanting in him, acting that in truth 
Which Cyrus did in shadow ; and to men 
Appeared like Peleus' son from Chiron's den : 
While through this island Fame his praise reports, 
As best in martial deeds and courtly sports. 
When riper age with winged feet repairs, 
G-rave care adorns his head with silver hairs ; 
His valiant fervour was not then decayed, 
But joined with counsel as a further aid. 

1 It has been suggested that Markham here alludes to the Earl's patronage 
of Shakspeare. 



92 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

Behold his constant and undaunted eye, 
In greatest danger, when condemned to die ! 
He scorns the insulting adversary's breath, 
And will admit no fear, though near to death. 
When shall we in this realm a Father find 
So truly sweet, or Husband half so kind ? 
Thus he enjoyed the best contents of life, 
Obedient children, and a loving wife. 
These were his parts in peace ; but, 0, how far 
This noble soul excelled itself in war. 
He was directed by a natural vein, 
True honour by this painful way to gain. 
I keep that glory last which is the best, 
The love of learning, which he oft expressed 
In conversation, and respect to those 
Who had a name in arts, in verse, or prose. 

His countess survived the earl for many years, and died 
in 1640. 

Walpole, in his Anecdotes of Painting, mentions a por- 
trait, half-length, of Elizabeth Vernon, as being at Sher- 
burn Castle, Dorsetshire. It is by Cornelius Jansen, who 
was patronized by the Earl of Southampton, 1 and may 
thus have drawn the portrait of Shakspeare. This picture, 
says Walpole, is equal to anything the master executed. 
The clothes are magnificent, and the attire of her head is 
singular, a veil turned quite back. The face and hands 
are coloured with incomparable lustre. There is also an 
authentic portrait of this lady, in good preservation, at 
Hodnet Hall, which represents her as a type of a beauty 
in the time of Elizabeth. Her dress is a brocade in brown 
and gold, her ribbons are scarlet and gold, her ruff and 

1 Peachum, in his ( Graphice, or the most Ancient and Excellent Art of 
Drawing and Limning/ says, the Earls of Southampton and Pembroke were 
amongst the chief patrons of painting in England. 

N.B. — In the footnote p. 220 of Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in Eng- 
land, Mr. Dallaway speaks wrongly of this work as being first published in 
1634. The first edition, a copy of which is in the British Museum, wa3 
published in 1612. 



ELIZABETH VERNON AND LADY RUSSELL. 93 

deep sleeve cuffs are of point lace, her ornaments of coral ; 
her hair is light, and her complexion fresh, vivid, auroral, 
having clearly that war of the red rose and the white 
described by Shakspeare in his 99th sonnet. The hair is 
suggestive, too, of the singular comparison used in that 
sonnet of ' buds of marjoram,' not in colour, but in shape. 
Supposing the lady was accustomed at times to leave a por- 
tion of it rather short, to be worn in front of the head-dress, 
or veil that swept backward, the ends would crisp and 
bunch themselves into a likeness of the little clusters of 
marjoram buds. Indeed, the shape of the head of hair, 
dressed superbly as it is, is not unlike a bush of marjo- 
ram in the spread of it ! 

An engraving by Thompson, from a portrait by Van- 
dyke, a copy of which is in the British Museum, shows 
Lady Southampton to have been tall and graceful, with a 
fine head and thoughtful face ; the long hair is softly 
waved with light and shadow, and the look has a touch 
of languor, different to the Hodnet Hall picture, but this 
last may be only a Vandyke grace. 

It is pleasant to remember that from this much-tried 
pair, in whom Shakspeare took so affectionate an interest, 
sprang one of the most glorious of Englishwomen, one 
of the pure white lilies of all womanhood ! This was the 
Lady Eussell, whose spirit rose so heroically to breast the 
waves of calamity ; whose face was as an angel's shining 
through the gathering shadows of death, with a look of 
lofty cheer, to hearten her husband on his way to the scaf- 
fold ; almost personifying, in her great love, the good Pro- 
vidence that had given to him so precious a spirit for a 
companion, so exalted a woman to be his wife ! This lady 
was the grand-daughter of the Earl and Countess of South- 
ampton. She was daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, who 
was called the Virtuous Lord Treasurer of Charles II., 
by his first wife, daughter of Henry de Massey, Baron de 
Eouvigni, a French Protestant noble. 



94 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



POET AND PATRON: 

THEIR PERSONAL FRIENDSHIP. 



The Earl of Southampton cannot be to us what he was 
to Shakspeare, and time has almost effaced him from the 
national memory ; he has nearly passed out of sight in 
that cloud of dust created by the fall of Essex. Yet, for 
our great poet's sake, no one can help taking an interest 
in his story, or in his friendship, of which the Sonnets 
are the fruit ; and the more we draw near to read his 
character aright, the greater reason we shall find to love 
him for what he once was to Shakspeare. There was a time 
in our poet's life when the patronage of Southampton, 
as it was described by Barnes, shone like a splendid 
shield in the eyes of envious rivals, and such a dazzling 
defence must have tended to lessen the yelpings of the 
pack that was at him in full cry about the year 1592. 
In all likehhood the earl was one, and the chief one, of 
those ' divers of worship,' who, according to Chettle, had 
reported so favourably of the poet's private character and 
dramatic ability. And, although not intended as an 
autobiographic record, the Sonnets sufficiently show that 
the friendship of the earl was the source of many com- 
forting and loving thoughts, which cherished and illumed 
his inner life, when the outer day may have been some- 
what desolate and drear. The 25th sonnet tells us how 



VALUE OF THE EARL'S FRIENDSHIP. 95 

Shakspeare congratulated himself on having secured such 
a friend, whose heart was larger than his fortunes, whose 
hand was liberal as his thought was generous, and whose 
kindly regard placed the poet far above the ' favourites 
of great princes.' What truth there may be in the tra- 
dition that the earl gave Shakspeare a thousand pounds 
at one time we cannot know ; it may have resulted from 
the fact that he had given the poet as much at various 
times. There can be no question, however, that he did 
him sundry good turns, and gave help of many kinds ; if 
required, money would be included ; this too, when the 
poet most needed help, to hearten him in his life-struggle, 
while he was working at the basis of his character and the 
foundations of his fortune and his fame. It would be a kind 
of breakwater influence, when the poet was fighting with 
wind and wave for every bit of foothold on firm ground. 

Shakspeare would likewise be indebted to his noble 
friend for many a glimpse of Court life and Court man- 
ners, many an insight into personal character, through 
this chance of seeing the personal characteristics that 
would otherwise have been veiled from him. His friend 
the earl would lift the curtain for him, and let him peep 
behind the scenes which were draped to the vulgar. 

It was a wonderful time for such a dramatist. Men 
and women played more personal parts, exerted more 
personal influence, and revealed more of their personal 
nature. The inner man got more direct manifestation. 
Shakspeare saw the spirits of men and women, as it were, 
in habitations of glass, sensitive to every light and shadow, 
and showing how the changes passed over them, by the 
glow or the gloom that followed. Now-a-days, we are 
shut up in houses of stone, iron-fenced by manners and 
customs and the growths of time, that have accumulated 
between man and man, putting them farther and farther 
apart, until a good deal of the Elizabethian nearness of 
life is gone for public men. We have lost much of that 



96 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

element, which has been described as the real source of 
genius, the spirit of boyhood carried into manhood, which 
the Elizabethans had, and showed it in their friendships 
and their fighting, their passions and their play. We are 
more shut up, and only peep at one another, we reveal 
the smallest possible part of ourselves. The Elizabethans 
had more naked nature for Shakspeare to draw ; he was 
as fortunate in the habits of his. time as the Greek 
sculptors were in the freedom of the Greek dress. He 
would not have made nearly so much out of us, had he 
lived in our day, because so much would not have been 
revealed in public. He would not be able to see the most 
characteristic things, the best and the worst saying out 
their utmost, known by name, and visible at their work. 
The personality which Shakspeare saw and seized, would 
now be lessened till almost invisible, in the increasing 
crowd of life, and conflict of circumstances, and change of 
things. He would only be able to read about such as 
those whom he saw and knew in daily life. He would 
now see no sight like that of Drake at bowls on Plymouth 
Hoe ; or Ealeigh smoking his pipe with his peasants, and 
making their eyes glitter with the mirage of a land of 
gold ; a Lord Grey rushing at Southampton in the street, 
with his sword drawn ; noble grey heads going to the 
block after a life of service for their country ; Essex and 
her Majesty exhibiting in public the pets and passions of 
the nursery ; or the Queen showing her leg to an am- 
bassador and boxing the ears of a favourite ; or a player 
who, like Tarleton, dared to abuse the favourite Leicester, 
present with the Queen, and who ' played the God Luz, 
with a flitch of bacon at his back ; and the Queen bade them 
take away the knave for making her to laugh so excessively, 
as he fought against her little clog Perrico de Faldas, with 
his sword and longstafF, and bade the Queen take off her 
mastiff.' 1 That was a time in which character was 

1 Scrap of paper in the State Paper Office, 1588. Calendar of State 
Papers, Elizabeth, 1581-1590, p. 541. 



HIS PRIVATE FRIENDS. 07 

brought closer home to the dramatist. And the Earl of 
Southampton's friendship was a means of introducing our 
poet to characters that must otherwise have remained out 
of reach. In this way he was enabled to make a close 
study of Southampton's friends, including persons like 
Essex and Montjoy, and one of the most remarkable 
characters of that time, one of the most unique samples 
of human nature, the Lady Eich, in whose person I think 
the poet saw several of his creations in outline, and whose 
influence warmed his imagination and gave colour to the 
complexion of his earlier women. Many a hint of foreign 
scenes would he catch from those who had travelled, and 
could describe ; men who in our time would perhaps put 
their experience into books, and many a heroic trait from 
the silent fighting men, who had done what they could not 
put into words. Looking over the shoulder of his noble 
friend, Shakspeare could thus see some of the best things 
that the life of his time had to show, and take his mental 
pictures with his instantaneous quickness of impression, 
for he had the chameleon-like spirit that could catch its 
colour from the air he breathed, and in the Earl of South- 
ampton's company he must often have breathed an air 
that ' sweetly crept ' into the study of his imagination, 
brightening and enriching his mind, and making its im- 
ages of life come to him 'apparelled in more precious 
habit,' more ' moving delicate,' especially in the shape of 
the exquisite fragrant-natured English ladies who became 
his Mirandas, Perditas, Imogenes, and Hermiones. 

It has been assumed that these sonnets of Shakspeare 
do but represent a form of sonneteering adulation 
common to the time. As though they were the poetic 
coin wherewith the poet sought to repay the patron for 
his munificent gifts. Nothing could be farther from the 
fact. They contain no flattery whatever. So far as they 
are personal to Shakspeare they come warm from his 
own sincere heart, and are vital with his own affectionate 

H 



98 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

feeling for the brave and bounteous peer to whom he 
publicly dedicated ' love without end,' and for whom he 
meant to make a wreath of immortal flower which had its 
mortal rootage in the poet's own life. Such a celebration 
of personal friendship as occurs in these sonnets was not 
common as some writers have supposed. In fact it has 
no parallel in the Elizabethan time. And such a friend- 
ship was as rare as is this celebration of it. 

Looking backward over the two centuries and a half, 
and seeing the halo of glory on the brow of the dead Past, 
it seems that the personal friendship of man and man was 
a more possible and noble thing with the Elizabethan men. 
Perhaps it is partly owing to the natural touch of Time in 
the composition of his historic pictures ; to the softened 
outline and mellowing tint. But those Elizabethans 
have a way of coming home to us with more of the 
nearness of brotherhood ; they are like a band of brothers 
with a touch of noble boyhood about their ways, and on 
their faces a light of the golden age. They make it 
possible to our hard national nature that the love of man 
to man may be at times ' passing the love of woman.' 
But such an example of personal friendship as that of 
Shakspeare the player and Southampton the peer stands 
absolutely alone ; there is nothing like it. 

We are apt to think of Shakspeare as the great master- 
spirit, who was fit to be the friend of the noblest by birth, 
and the kingliest by nature. Those who knew him, we 
fancy, would be more likely to think of the Scripture text, 
that reminds us not to be forgetful of entertaining stran- 
gers, for they may be the angels of God in disguise, rather 
than to be troubled with thoughts and suggestions of his 
being only a poor player. But the age in which he lived, 
and in which this friendship was engendered, was a time 
when the distinctions of rank and the boundary lines of 
classes were so precisely observed that even the particular 
style and quality of dress were imposed according to the 



THE FIE ST MEETING OF POET AND PATRON. 99 

wearer's position in life. Therefore the feeling of personal 
friendship must have been very strong in these two men, 
to have so far obliterated the social landmarks, and made 
their remarkable intimacy possible. 

I think the 25th sonnet tells us plainly enough, that the 
young earl first sought out the poet, and conferred on him 
an unexpected honour ; a joy unlooked-for. This view is 
most in keeping with the two personal characters. Then 
the frank-hearted, free-handed young noble soon found that 
his advances were amply repaid. And he had the insight 
to sea that here was a noble of nature, with something in 
him which towered over all social distinctions. On his side, 
the poet would warmly appreciate the open generous dis- 
position of the earl, who, whatever else he lacked, had the 
genius to make himself beloved. Shakspeare was that natu- 
ral gentleman, who could preserve exactly the distance at 
which the attraction is magnetically perfect, and most 
powerfully felt ; thus the acquaintanceship soon grew into 
a friendship of the nearest and dearest possible between 
Shakspeare, the man of large and sweet affections, and the 
comely good-natured youth, who had the intuition to dis- 
cover the poet, and was drawn lovingly towards the man. 
Of the depth of the personal affection, and the inward 
nature of the friendship, there is the most abundant proof. 
The dedicatory epistle to his poem of ' Lucrece' breathes 
the most cheery assurance, and publicly alludes to a pri- 
vate history that has never before been understood, but 
which will now serve to show how close were the person- 
alities, how secret the relationship of Southampton and 
Shakspeare. Then we have the letter of Lord Southamp- 
ton, which I, for one, feel to be a genuine document; 
and, as regards the internal evidence, the present reading 
of the sonnets will make that speak more eloquently than 
ever in favour of our accepting it as the utterance of South- 
ampton. The letter has a touch of nature, a familiarity 
in the tone, beyond the dream or the daring of a forger 



100 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

to assume, for the facts of the intimate personal friendship 
revealed for the first time by the present reading of the 
sonnets, which accord so perfectly with the tone of the 
letter, could not be sufficiently known, to warrant the 
statements, or support the design, had it been a forgery. 
In this letter, the earl pleads with his powerful friend the 
Lord Ellesmere, on behalf of the 'poor players of the 
Blackfriars,' and asks him to ' be good ' to them ' in this the 
time of their trouble,' for they are threatened by the Lord 
Mayor and aldermen of London with the destruction of 
their means of livelihood 'by the pulling down of their 
playhouse.' The chief point for us is, that the Earl of 
Southampton introduces one of the bearers, ' William 
Shakspeare,' to the Lord High Chancellor's notice, as ' his 
especial friend,' a man who is 'right famous ' in his quality 
as a writer of plays, and a husband of ' good reputation.' 
Now, to my thinking, that phrase 'my especial friend' 
would not have been ventured by a forger ; he would not 
have hazarded the lordly largeness, if the fact had been 
visible, which is more than doubtful ; for, although Shaks- 
peare dedicated to the earl his 'love without end,' yet, 
apart from this letter, it could not be known that the earl 
proclaimed the especial friendship to be reciprocal, and the 
forger would not have had authentic warrant. Therefore I 
do not see how any other than Southampton could have so 
perfectly hit the very fact, which is now unveiled for the 
first time, in my reading of the sonnets. The present in- 
terpretation of these must help to prove the genuineness of 
the letter. 1 The sonnets themselves abound with proofs that 

1 The matter of this 'H. S.' letter is, in my humble opinion, most authentic ; 
both openly and secretly so. There is a witness within it of more infallible 
authority than that of the Palseographists, who, in the case of a copy like 
this, can hardly know what it is they are called upon to disprove. Supposing 
a forger to have hit upon the personal friendship of the Earl for Shakspeare 
and dared to proclaim it, and made that the motive of the Earl's plea, he 
would not have ventured on the perilous attempt to mark the exact period 
of Shakspeare's retirement from the stage as an actor, and thus lamed his 



ILLUSTRATIONS OF INTIMACY. 101 

the personal intimacy of Shakspeare and Southampton was 
very inward, the friendship most uncommon. So near are 
they, that in sonnet 39, the poet says the two are but one ; 
and, that when he praises his friend, it is as though he were 
praising himself. Therefore, he proposes to take advantage 
of a separation, which is to divide them, and make their 
' dear love ' lose the name and look of singleness, by 
throwing into perspective that half which alone deserves to 
be praised. Absence and distance are necessary to show 
even in appearance that the two are not one ! In sonnet 
23, his love is so great that he cannot speak it, when they 
meet in person : the strength of his feeling is such as to 
tie his tongue, and make him like an unpractised actor on 
the stage, overcome by his emotion, so he tries to express 
it in his sonnets, pleading that they may be more eloquent 
with their silent love than the tongue, that might have said 
more. The plea also of sonnet 22 is most expressive of 
tender intimacy. ' Oh, my friend,' he says, ' be of your- 
self as wary as I will be of myself; not for myself, but on 
your account. I will bear your heart as cautiously, and 
keep it from all ill, as protectingly as a nurse carries her 
babe.' His spirit hovers about the earl. He warns him 
that youth is short, and beauty a fleeting glow. He defends 
him when he has been falsely accused and slandered by 
the gossips about the Court ; is sad, when the earl is reck- 
less and does break out in wild courses, or dwells in infec- 
tious society ; wishes himself dead, rather than that he 
should have seen such sorrowful things ; tries, as I read, 
to set the earl writing (in sonnet 77), by way of diver- 
case by selecting the wrong point in illustrating the friendship ! Then, the 
recommendation of Shakspeare on account of his good reputation as a married 
man, is so utterly opposed to the idea of a forgery. It was not one of the 
outlines of the poet's life pencilled ready for filling in ! For it has always 
"been assumed that his reputation as a married man was not good, and latterly 
it has been taken for granted that the Earl of Southampton had very private 
reasons for knowing so. Nevertheless, the letter, as I believe, states the real 
fact of the case in this, as in the other particulars, with a sureness beyond 
the happiest divination of a forger, and the life is not yet trodden out of it ! 



102 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

sion, for his moral behoof and mental benefit. He will 
write of him and his love in his absence abroad, and when 
he returns to England how lovingly (in sonnet 100) he 
holds him to look into the sun-browned face, with a 
peering jealousy of affection, to see what change has been 
wrought by the wear of war, and waste of time, — 

Rise, restive Muse, my Love's sweet face survey ; 
If Time have any wrinkle graven there. 

' If any, be ready with the colour of immortal tint to retouch 
his beauty and make it live for ever in immortal youth.' 
Then we see that the poet's love grows warmer, as the 
world looks colder on the earl ; it rises with the tide of 
calamity, that threatened to overwhelm him ; it exults and 
' looks fresh with the drops of that most balmy time,' 
when the poet welcomed his friend at the opened door of 
his prison, in 1603 (sonnet 107), and made the free light 
of day richer with his cordial smile. 

' If the Earl of Southampton,' says Boaden, ' had been 
the person addressed by Shakspeare, we should expect the 
poet to have told the earl that but for his calamity and 
disgrace, mankind would never have known the resources 
of his mighty mind.' So might we if the poet had been a 
common flatterer, who had stood afar off and talked flam- 
boyant nonsense that was never meant to be tested for 
the truth, never brought to bear upon the real facts 
because of the personal distance at which it was spoken. 
But this was not Shakspeare's position. The earl had not 
a mighty mind, and Shakspeare was not driven by stress 
of circumstances to laud the mental gifts which his friend 
did not possess. In only a single instance has he men- 
tioned the intellect of the earl. 1 In this fact we may find 
one more illustration of the inwardness of their personal 
intimacy. They were too intimate, and knew each other 

1 Sonnet 82, 'Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue.'' 



NEARNESS OF THE TWO FRIENDS. 103 

too well, for any ' bosli ' to be tolerated on either side. 
When Shakspeare spoke of his friend Southampton it was 
from the quiet depths of genuine feeling, not from the 
noisy shallows of flattery ; and such was the nature of their 
intercourse, the freedom of their friendship, that he was 
permitted to do so, and could afford it, What Shakspeare 
foimd in Southampton was not great gifts of mind to 
admire, but a fine generosity and hearty frankness of 
nature to love. He was one of those who grasp a friend 
with both hands to hold him fast, and wear him in their 
heart of hearts. Shakspeare loved him too truly to speak 
falsely of him. He was the only great poet in his time who 
never stood cap in hand, or dealt in i lozengerie.' His 
tone is like the voice of good breeding gentle and low, 
with no straining for effect. Any exaggerative expression 
was unnecessary, and would have been most unnatural, 
which with Shakspeare means impossible. This mode of 
treatment proves the personal privacy. Shakspeare did 
not address his friend as a public man at a distance — had 
no need of the speaking trumpet". — but was thus secret and 
familiar with him as a bosom friend. 

Upon any theory of interpretation the personal intimacy 
must have been of the closest, most familiar kind. Those 
who have so basely imagined that Shakspeare and his 
young friend both shared one mistress must assume that 
the intimacy was one of great nearness. Also those who 
accept the coarsest reading of the 20th sonnet must admit 
that the poet was on very familiar terms with the earl to 
address him in the low loose language which they have 
attributed to him by their modern rather than Elizabethian 
reading. My interpretation supposes a nearness equally 
great, a personal intimacy equally secret, but as pure as 
theirs is gross, as noble as theirs is ignoble, as natural as 
theirs is unnatural. An intimacy which does not strain 
all probability in assuming it to have been close enough for 
Shakspeare to write dramatic sonnets on his friend's love 



104 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

and courtship, as it does to suppose the poet wrote sonnets 
to proclaim their mutual disgrace, and perpetuate his 
own sin and shame. In truth it is the sense of that 
nearness which I advocate, which, working blindly, has 
given some show of likelihood to the vulgar interpreta- 
tion ; the tender feeling passing the love of woman which, 
carried into the interpretation of the impersonal sonnets 
by prurient minds, has made the intimacy look one of 
which any extravagance might be believed. 

The personal sonnets all tend to show and illustrate 
this nearness of the two friends, only they prove it to have 
been on Shakspeare's part of the purest, loftiest, most manly 
kind. There is not one of those wherein Shakspeare is 
the speaker for certain, that can possibly be pressed into 
showing that the friendship had the vile aspect into which 
it has been distorted. 

Southampton being identified as the person addressed, 
and the object of Shakspeare's personal affection, the inti- 
macy must have been one that was perfectly compatible 
with the earl's love for a woman. For it is certain that he 
was in love, and passionately wooing Elizabeth Vernon, 
during some years of the time over which the sonnets 
extend. And it would be witlessly weak to suppose that 
Shakspeare wrote sonnets upon a disgraceful intimacy to 
amuse a man who was purely in love ; out of all nature 
to imagine that he pursued Southampton in the wooing 
amorous way more fondly and tenderly than ever, after 
the earl had become passionately enamoured of Elizabeth 
Vernon. He would neither thrust himself forward as the 
lady's rival for the earl's love, nor appear in her presence- 
chamber covered with moral mire to remind them both 
of the fact that he and the earl had rolled in the dirt 
together ; and the intimacy must have been such as to 
recommend Shakspeare to Elizabeth Vernon as a friend 
of the earl, not brand him as an enemy to herself. Again, 
Boaden is of opinion that the sonnets do not at all apply 



ELDER BROTHERHOOD. 105 

to Lord Southampton, either as to age. character, or the 
bustle and activity of a life distinguished by distant and 
hazardous service, to something of which they must have 
alluded had he been their object. He argues that there 
was not sufficient difference in their ages for Shakspeare 
to have called the earl ; sweet boy.' The difference was 
9 years and 6 months. Our poet was born April, 1564, 
and his friend October, 1573. Now if the two men had 
been of like mental constitution that difference in years 
would have made considerable disparity in character 
when the one was thirty and the other but twenty years 
of age. But one man is not as old as another at the same 
age, nor are men constituted alike. Shakspeare's mental 
life, and ten years' experience in such a life, were very 
different things to the life and experience of his young 
friend. He may have been quite warranted by this 
difference in age in calling the earl ' sweet boy,' but 
his expression did not depend on age alone. When a 
priest says ; my child,' he does not first stop to consider 
whether the person so addressed is some twenty years 
younger than himself. He is presumed to be speaking 
from a feeling that is not exactly governed or guided 
chronologically. So with Shakspeare. He is taking the 
liberty and latitude of affection. He uses the language of 
a love that delights to dally with the wee words and 
dainty diminutives of speech, and tries as it were to ex- 
press the largeness of its feeling in the smallest shape, on 
purpose to get all the nearer to nature, it being the way 
of all fond love to express itself in miniature. It is one 
of Shakspeare's ways of expressing the fulness and 
familiarity of his affection rather than any difference in 
age. He speaks by virtue of that protecting tenderness of 
spirit which he feels for the youth — the prerogative of 
very near friendship — an authority which no age could 
necessarily confer. And it is also his way of expressing 
the difference of rank and position, as the world would 



106 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

have it, that existed betwixt them ; the distance at which 
he is supposed to stand is turned to account in the shape 
of an elder brotherhood. It is of set purpose that 
Shakspeare paints himself older than he was, as most 
obviously he has done ; it is intended as a framework for 
his picture. He deepens the contrast and gives to his own 
years a sort of golden gloom, and mellow background, 
with the view of setting forth in more vernal hues the 
fresh ruddy youth of his friend. He puts on an autumnal 
tint and exaggerates his riper years on purpose to place 
in relief that image of youth which he has determined to 
perpetuate in all its spring-tide beauty, and the ' yellow 
leaf ' throws out the ratheness of the green. This does 
not show that there were not sufficient years betwixt them, 
but that the intimacy of friendship was such as to permit 
the poet to obey a natural law which has served to finish 
his picture with a more artistic touch, and to further 
illustrate the familiarity of his affection. 

It may be that to the dear and generous friendship of 
the earl, the world is to a large extent indebted for those 
beautiful delineations of loving friendship betwixt man and 
man which Shakspeare has given us, excelling all other 
dramatists here as elsewhere. There is a sacred sweetness 
in his manly friendship ; fine and fragrant in its kind, as 
is the delicate aroma breathed by his most natural and ex- 
quisite women. No one, like him, in secular literature, has 
so tenderly shown the souls of two men in the pleasant 
wedlock of a delightful friendship. The rarest touch being 
reserved for the picture in which one friend is considerably 
older than the other. Then the effect is gravely-gladsome 
indeed ; the touch is one of the nearest to nature. This 
we may fairly connect with his own affectionate feeling 
for the young earl, and see how that which was subjective 
in the sonnets has become objective in the plays. Thus, 
behind Bassanio and Antonio we may identify Southamp- 
ton and Shakspeare. How much Shakspeare may have 



SHAKSPEARE'S KING RICHARD II. 107 

adventured for his young friend who was bound up in the 
Essex bond, — how far he lent himself, in spite of his better 
judgment, we shall probably never know, but we may be 
sure that his love, like that of Antonio, was strong enough 
to surmount all selfish considerations. And so, at the 
pressing solicitations of Southampton, the drama of King 
Eichard II. was altered by Shakspeare on purpose to be 
played seditiously, with the deposition scene newly added ! 
This patent fact is my concluding proof of the personal 
intimacy of peer and poet, and of the force and familiarity 
of their friendship. 1 

1 For a fact I hold it to be in spite of the squeamish assertion made by 
Mr. Collier to the contrary. The known friendship of Southampton for the 
poet is "better evidence than anything in the recollections of Forman. The 
reply of Coke to Southampton's question as to what he thought they would 
have done with the Queen had they gained the Court points directly to 
Shakspeare's play. Mr. Attorney said the 'pretence was alike for removing 
certain councillors, but it shortly after cost the King his life.' Then, if it were 
not Shakspeare's drama, which was some years old at the time, revived, with 
additions for Essex' purpose, what is the meaning of the advertisement pre- 
fixed to the edition of 1608 ' The Tragedy of King Richard the 2nd, with new 
additions of the Parliament scene and the deposing of King Richard. As it 
hath been lately acted by the Kinges Majesties servants, at the Globe ' ? Plainly 
enough it is the play altered for the purpose which excited curiosity, and had 
a long run in consequence. The same advertisement is printed in the edition 
of 1615, and it is perfectly absurd to suppose that any other ' King Richard 
the SeconcV was being played at Shakspeare's Theatre in the year 1611. 
This is going against the tide, and seeking to catch at a straw (Forman's 
Jack Straw !) most vainly. 



1C8 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 



PERSONAL SONNETS, 

1592. 



3>8^c 



SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL, WISHING- HIM TO 

MARRY. 



We may now look upon the dear friend of Shakspeare as 
sufficiently identified, and the nearness of the friendship 
as sufficiently established. In the first group of his sonnets 
the poet advises and persuades his young friend the Earl 
of Southampton to get married. A very practical object 
in writing the sonnets ! This of itself shows that he 
did not set out to write after the fashion of Drayton and 
Daniel, and dally with 'Idea' as tbey did. Here is 
a young noble of nature's own making ; a youth of quick 
and kindling blood, apt to take fire at a touch, whether of 
pleasure or of pain ; likely enough to be enticed into the 
garden of Armida and the palace of sin. He is left with- 
out the guidance of a father, and the poet feels for him an 
affection all the more protecting and paternal. We may 
easily perceive that underneath the pretty conceits sparkling 
on the surface of these earlier sonnets there lies a grave 
purpose, a profound depth of wisdom. This urgency on 
the score of marriage is no mere sonneteering trick, or 
playing with the shadows of things. The writer knows 
well that there is nothing like true marriage, a worthy 
wife, the love of children, and a happy home, to bring 
the exuberant life into the keeping of the highest, holiest 
law. Nothing like the wifely influence, and the clinging 



DEDICATION OF EARLY SONNETS. 109 

of children's wee ringers, for twining winningly about the 
lusty energies of youth, and realizing the antique image of 
Love riding on a lion ; the laughing mite triumphantly lead- 
ing captive the fettered might, having taken him ' pri- 
soner, in a red rose chain ! ' Seeing his young friend sur- 
rounded with temptations, his personal beauty of mien and 
manner being so prominent a mark for the darts of the 
enemy, he would fain have him safely shielded by the 
sacred shelter of marriage. Accordingly he assails him 
with suggestion and argument in many forms of natural 
appeal ; and whilst harping much on the main object for 
which marriage was designed, the harmony of the life 
truly wedded rises like a strain of exquisite music, as it 
were, wooing the youth from within the doors of the 
marriage sanctuary. 

These sonnets the poet sends to his friend in 'written 
embassage ' of love, hoping that he may yet have some- 
thing worthy of print, so that he can dare to boast pub- 
licly of that affection for his friend, which he only ventures 
for the present to show privately. 

DEDICATORY. 

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage 

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, 

To thee I send this written embassage, 

To witness duty, not to show my wit : 

Duty so great which wit so poor as mine 

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it ; 

But that I hope some good conceit of thine 

In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it : 

Till whatsoever star that guides my moving 

Points on me graciously with fair aspect, 

And puts apparel on my tattered loving, 

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect : 

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee ; 

Till then, not show my head where thou mayst prove me, 



110 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

From fairest creatures we desire increase, 
That thereby Beauty's rose might never die, 
But as the riper should by time decease, 
His tender heir might bear his memory : 
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, 
Feed'st thy light's flame with self-substantial fuel, 
Making a famine where abundance lies, 
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel : 
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament, 
And only herald to the gaudy spring, 
Within thine own bud buriest thy content 
And, tender churl ! mak'st waste in niggarding : 
Pity the world, or else this glutton be, 
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee. 



00 



When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, 
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, 
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now, 
Will be a tattered weed, of small worth held : 
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies, 
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days, 
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes, 
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise : 
How much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, 
If thou could'st answer, " this fair child of mine 
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse" 
Proving his beauty by succession thine ! 

This were to be new-made when thou art old, 
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold. 

w 

Look in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest, 

Now is the time that face should form another, 

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest, 

Thou dost beguile the world — unbless some mother : 

For where is she so fair, whose uneared womb 

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry ? 

Or who is he so fond, will be the tomb 

Of his self-love to stop posterity ? 

Thou art thy Mother's glass, and she in thee 

Calls back the lovely April of her prime : 



YOUNG MEN SHOULD MARRY. Ill 

So thou, through windows of thine age, shalt see, 
Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time : 

But if thou live — remembered not to be--- 

Die single, and thine image dies with thee. 

(3.) 

Unthrifty loveliness ! why dost thou spend 
Upon thyself thy beauty's legacy ? 
Nature's bequest gives nothing, but doth lend, 
And, being frank, she lends to those are free : 
Then, beauteous niggard ! why dost thou abuse 
The bounteous largess given thee to give ? 
Profitless usurer ! why dost thou use 
So great a sum of sums, yet canst not live ? 
For, having traffic with thyself alone, 
Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceave : 
Then how, when Nature calls thee to be gone, 
What acceptable audit canst thou leave ? 

Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee, 

Which, used, lives thy executor to be. 

0-) 

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame 

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, 

Will play the tyrants to the very same, 

And that unfair, which fairly doth excell : 

For never-resting Time leads summer on 

To hideous winter, and confounds him there ; 

Sap check' d with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, 

Beauty o'er-snowed, and bareness everywhere : 

Then, were not Summer's distillation left, 

A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, 

Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, 

Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was ! 

But flowers distilled, tho' they with winter meet, 
Leese but their show ; their substance still lives sweet, 

(5.) 

Then let not Winter's rugged hand deface 
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled : 
Make sweet some phial ; treasure thou some place 
With beauty's treasure, ere it be self-killed : 
That use is not forbidden luxury, 



ITS SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Which happies those that pay the willing loan : 

That's for thyself to breed another thee, 

Or, ten times happier ! be it ten for one : 

Ten times thyself were happier than thon art, 

If ten of thine ten times refigured thee : 

Then what could Death do if thou shouldst depart, 

Leaving thee living in posterity ? 

Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair 

To be Death's conquest, and make worms thine heir. 

(6.) 

Lo, in the Orient when the gracious light 

Lifts up his burning head, each under-eye 

Doth homage to his new-appearing sight, 

Serving with looks his sacred majesty : 

And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill, 

Resembling strong Youth in his middle age, 

Yet mortal looks adore his beauty, still 

Attending on his golden pilgrimage : 

But when from highmost pitch, with weary car, 

Like feeble Age, he reeleth from the day, 

The eyes— 'fore duteous — now converted are 

From his low tract, and look another way : 
So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon, 
Unlooked on diest, unless thou get a son. 

Music to hear ! why hear'st thou music sadly ? 
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy : 
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly, 
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy ? 
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds, 
By unions married, do offend thine ear, 
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds 
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear : 
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another, 
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering ; 
Resembling Sire, and Child, and happy Mother, 
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing : 

Whose speechless song being many, seeming one, 
Sings this to thee — " Thou single wilt 'prove none." 

(8.) 



WORDS OF WARNING. 113 

[s it for fear to wet a widow's eye, 

That thou consam'st thyself in single life ? 

Ah ! if thou issueless shalt hap to die, 

The world will wail thee like a makeless wife ; 

The world will be thy widow! and still weep 

That thou no form of thee hast left behind, 

When every private widow well may keep, 

By children's eyes, her husband's shape in mind : 

Look, what an unthrift in the world doth spend 

Shifts but its place, for still the world enjo} T s it ; 

But beauty's waste hath in the world an end, 

And kept unused, the user so destroys it : 

Xo love towards others in that bosom sits 

That on himself such murderous shame commits. 

(9.) 

For shame ! deny that thou bear'st love to any, 

"Who for thyself art so unprovident : 

Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many, 

But that thou none lov'st is most evident ; 

For thou art so possessed with murderous hate 

That 'gainst thyself thou stick'st not to conspire ; 

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate 

Which to repair should be thy chief desire : 

0, change thy thought, that I may change my mind ! 

Shall Hate be freer lodged than gentle Love ? 

Be, as thy presence is, gracious and kind, 

Or to thyself, at least, kind-hearted prove ; 

Make thee another self, for love of me, 

That beauty still mav live in thine or thee. 

(10.) 

As fast as thou shalt wane, so fast thou growest 

In one of thine, from that which thou departest ; 

And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestowest 

Then may'st call thine, when thou from youth convertest : 

Herein lives wisdom, beauty and increase : 

Without this, folly, age, and cold decay : 

If all were minded so, the times should cease, 

And threescore years would make the world away : 

Let those whom Xature hath not made for store. 

Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish : 






114 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Look, whom she best endowed she gave the more ; 

Which bounteous gift thou should'st in bounty cherish ; 
She carved thee for her seal, and meant thereby 
Thou should'st print more, nor let that copy die. 

en.) 

When I do count the clock that tells the time, 
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night ; 
When I behold the violet past prime, 
And sable curls are silvered o'er with white ; 
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, 
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, 
And Summer's green all girded up in sheaves, 
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard ; — 
Then of thy beauty do I question make, 
That thou amongst the wastes of time must go, 
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, 
And die as fast as they see others grow ; 

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence, 
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence. 

(.2.) 

0, that you were yourself ! but Love, you are 
No longer yours, than you yourself here live 
Against this coming end you should prepare, 
And your sweet semblance to some other give : 
So should that beauty which you hold in lease, 
Find no determination ; then you w T ere 
Yourself again after yourself 's decease, 
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear : 
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay, 
Which husbandry in honour might uphold 
Against the stormy gusts of winter's day, 
And barren rage of Death's eternal cold ? 

none but unthrifts ! Dear, my Love, you know 
You had a Father ; let your Son say so. 



(13.) 



Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck, 

And yet methinks I have astronomy ; 

But not to tell of good or evil luck, 

Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality : 

Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, 



THE TRUE WAY TO WAE WITH TIME. 115 

'Pointing to each his thunder, rain, and wind ; 

Or say with Princes if it shall go well, 

By oft predict that I in Heaven find : 

But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, 

And, — constant stars, — in them I read such art, 

As truth and beauty shall together thrive, 

If from thyself to store thou would'st convert ; 
Or else of thee this I prognosticate, 
Thy end is Truth's and Beauty's doom and date. 

(14.) 

When I consider everything that grows 
Holds in perfection but a little moment ; 
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows 
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment; 
When I perceive that men as plants increase, 
Cheered and check'd even by the self-same sky ; 
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease, 
And wear their brave state out of memory ; 
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay 
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight, 
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay, 
To change your day of youth to sullied night ; 

And all in war with Time for love of you, 

As he takes from you, I engraft you new. 

(15.) 

But wherefore do not you a mightier way 

Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time ? 

And fortify yourself in your decay 

With means more blessed than my barren rhyme ? 

Now stand you on the top of happy hours ! 

And many maiden gardens, yet unset, 

With virtuous wish would bear your living flowers, 

Much liker than your painted counterfeit : 

So should the lines of life that life repair, 

Which this time's Pencil, or my pupil Pen, 1 

1 This line has never yet been read, nor could it be -whilst printed as 
heretofore : — 

'Which this, Time's pencil, or my pupil pen.' 

It was impossible to see what this meant. What Shakspeare says is, that 
the best painter, the master-pencil of the time, or his own pen of a learner, 

i 2 



/ 



116 SHAKSPEABE'S SONNETS. 

Neither in inward worth, nor outward fair, 

Can make you live yourself in eyes of men : 
To give away yourself keeps yourself still, 
And you must live, drawn by your own sweet skill. 

(16.) 

Who will believe my verse in time to come, 

If it were filled with your most high deserts ? 

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb 

Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts ! 

If I could write the beauty of your eyes, 

And in fresh numbers number all your graces, 

The age to come would say ' this Poet lies, 

Such heavenly touches ne'er touched earthly faces : ' 

So should my papers, yellowed with their age, 

Be scorned, like old men of less truth than tongue : 

And your true rights be termed a Poet's rage, 

And stretched metre of an antique song : 

But were some child of yours alive that time, 
You should live twice ; in it, and in my rhyme. 

(17.) 

will alike fail to draw the Earl's lines of life as lie himself can do it, by his 
' own sweet skill.' This pencil of the time may have been Mirevelt's; he 
painted the Earl's portrait in early manhood. 



117 



PERSONAL SONNETS. 

1592-3. 



SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL, IN PRAISE OF HIS 
PERSONAL BEAUTY. 



In the next two groups of Sonnets there are two ideas 
which touch in one or more places. These are the praise 
of his friend's beauty and the promise of immortality. 
Yet, they are wrought out with a sufficient distinctness to 
warrant my keeping them apart. I group them accord- 
ing to their unity of feeling rather than follow their 
numbers, for the confusion has now commenced which 
runs all through the remainder of the Sonnets. The 
subject of this present gathering is the Earl's beauty of 
person, which the Poet pourtrays with a moralising touch. 
Manly comeliness was of greater account with the Poets in 
Shakspeare's time than it is in ours. We consider such 
taste too feminine. Our Poet thought his friend's graces 
of person worthy of commendation. He searches amongst 
old paintings and the ancient chronicles to see if pen 
or picture has expressed such an image of youth and 
beauty. He looks at his own elder face in the glass, and 
tries to paint it with his friend's boy-bloom, and thinks it 
very gracious when seen beneath the crown of his friend's 
affection. He points out what is the loftiest beauty. 

But Shakspeare may have had another motive for sing- 
ing of the Earl's personal good looks. It is noticeable that 



118 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

the Poet's urgency on the score of his friend's marriage 
ceases with the first seventeen sonnets. So that it is 
reasonable to suppose Southampton had met and fallen in 
love with ' the fair Mistress Vernon,' and that he being 
desirous of marrying her, there was no further call for 
Shakspeare's advice on the subject. This being so, the 
sonnets in praise of the Earl would sooner or later be 
written with a consciousness that they would come under 
the eyes of Elizabeth Vernon, and the Poet's laudation be 
likewise for her ears, his portrait of the Earl coloured for 
her eyes ! Not for himself alone nor for the Earl merely 
did he utter all the praise of his friend's beauty of person 
and constancy in love, but for another interested and 
loving listener. These sonnets I have supposed the Poet 
to send with a sort of dedicatory strain in which he con- 
gratulates himself on having so dear a friend. 

DEDICATORY. 

Let those who are in favour with their stars 
Of public honour and proud titles boast, 
Whilst I, whom Fortune of such triumph bars, 
Unlooked-for joy in that I honour most : 
Great Princes' favourites their fair leaves spread, 
But as the marygold at the sun's eye ; 
And in themselves their pride lies buried, 
For at a frown they in their glory die : 
The painful warrior famoused for worth 1 
After a thousand victories once foiled, 
Is from the book of honour rase*d forth, 
And all the rest forgot for which he toiled : 

Then happy I, that love and am beloved 

Where I may not remove, nor be removed. 

(25.) 



1 The Quarto reads ' famoused for worth/ which only needs the rhyme 
of ' forth ' to make out both sense and sound. Why * worth ' should have 
been changed for i fight ' by Theobald, it is difficult to perceive. The Poet 
never could have written ' famoused for fight.' Steevens says : 'the stanza 
is not worth the labour that has been bestowed on it/ but as commentators 



THE EARL'S PORTRAIT. 119 

A Woman's face, with Nature's own hand painted, 

Hast thou the master-mistress of my passion ; 

A Woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted 

With shifting change, as is false women's fashion ; 

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling, 

Grilding the object whereupon it gazeth ; 

A man in hue, all hues in his controlling, 

Wnich steal Men's eyes and Women's souls amazeth : 

And for a Woman wert thou first created, 

Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting, 

And by addition me of thee defeated, 

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing : 

But since she marked thee out for women's pleasure, 
Mine be thy love and thy love's use their treasure. 

(20.) 

If there be nothing new, but that which is 

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled, 

Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss 

The second burthen of a former child ! 

0, that record could with a backward look, 

Even of five hundred courses of the sun, 

Show me your image in some antique book, 

Since mind at first in character was done ! 

That I might see what the old world could say 

To this composed wonder of your frame ; 

Whether we are mended, or where better they, 

Or whether revolution be the same : 

! sure I am the wits of former days 

To subjects worse have given admiring praise. 

(59.) , 

When in the chronicle of wasted time 
I see descriptions of the fairest wights, 
And Beauty making beautiful old rhyme 
In praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights, 

must make unnecessary alterations by way of improving Skakspeare, lie tries 
his hand at a transposition thus: — 

' The painful warrior for worth famousedj 
After a thousand victories once foiled, 
Is from the book of honour quite razed. 1 

And he unostentatiously remarks that the rhyme may be recovered in that 

way i without further change. 



120 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Then in the blazon of sweet Beauty's best, 

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow, 

I see their antique Pen would have expressed 

Even such a beauty as you master now ! 

So all their praises are but prophecies 

Of this our time, all you prefiguring; 

And, for they looked not with divining eyes, 

They had not skill enough your worth to sing : 

For we, which now behold these present days, 
Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise. 

(106.) 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day ? 

Thou art more lovely and more temperate : 

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, 

And Summer's lease hath all too short a date : 

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, 

And often is his gold complexion dimmed ; 

And every fair from fair sometime declines, 

By chance, or Nature's changing course untrimmed ; 

But thy eternal summer shall not fade, 

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest ; 

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade, 

When in eternal lines to time thou growest : 

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, 
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 



(is.) 



Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye 
And all my soul and all my every part ; 
And for this sin there is no remedy, 
It is so grounded inward in my heart : 
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine, 
No shape so true, no truth of such account ; 
And for rnyself mine own worth do define, 
As I all others in all worths surmount : 
But when my glass shows me myself indeed, 
Beated and chopped with tanned antiquity, 
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read ; 
Self so self-loving were iniquity : 

'Tis thee — myself — that for- myself I praise, 
Painting my age with beauty of thy days. 



>2.) 



THE HIGHEST BEAUTY. 12J 

My glass shall not persuade me I am old, 

So long as youth and thou are of one date : 

But when in thee Time's furrows I behold, 

Then look I death my days should expiate : 

For all that beauty that doth cover thee, 

Is but the seemly raiment of my heart, 

Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me ; 

How can I then be elder than thou art? 

0, therefore, Love, be of thyself so wary, 

As I, not for myself, but for thee will ; 

Bearing thy heart which I will keep so chary 

As tender nurse her babe from faring ill : 

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain, 
Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again. 

(22.) 

What is your substance ? whereof are you made, 

That millions of strange shadows on you tend ? 

Since every one hath, every one, one shade, 

And you, but one, can every shadow lend ! 

Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit 

Is poorly imitated after you ; 

On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set, 

And you in Grecian tires are painted new : 

Speak of the spring and foison of the year : 

The one doth shadow of your beauty show, 

The other as your bounty doth appear, 

And you in every blessed shape we know : 

In all external grace you have some part, 

But you like none, none you, for constant heart. 

(53.) 

how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, 

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give ! 

The Eose looks fair, but fairer we it deem 

For that sweet odour which doth in it live : 

The Canker-blooms have full as deep a dye, 

As the perfumed tincture of the roses, 

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly 

When Summer's breath their masked buds discloses : 

But for their virtue only is their show, 



122 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

They live unwooed, and unrespected fade ; 

Die to themselves : Sweet Eoses do not so ; 

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made : 
And so of you, beauteous and lovely Youth, 
When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth. 

(54.) 



123 



PERSONAL SONNETS. 



1592-3. 



SHAKSPEAEE TO THE EARL, PROMISING 
IMMORTALITY. 



Shakspeare's two dominant ideas in the sonnets written 
for the Earl of Southampton are, first, to get the Earl 
married, and next to make him immortal. In these pre- 
sent he has grown bolder in his tone, and apparently more 
conscious of his power. It is quite likely that the Earl's 
fight with fortune had begun when most of these were 
written, and the Poet grows defiant of time and fate on 
his friend's behalf. In the sonnet which I have placed as 
Dedicatory to the group, the poet unwittingly tells us how 
great was his own personal modesty. When he is with 
the Earl he is unable to say how much he loves him ; 
cannot do any justice in expression to his own feelings, 
and so he asks that his books, his writings, may speak for 
him, silently eloquent. 



124 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



DEDICATORY. 



As an imperfect Actor on the stage 

Who with his fear is put beside his part, 

Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage, 

Whose strength's abundance weakens his own heart ; 

So I, for fear of trust, forget to say 

The perfect ceremony of love's rite, 

And in mine own love's strength seem to decay, 

Overcharged with burthen of mine own love's might : 

0, let my books be then the eloquence l 

And dumb presagers of my speaking breast ; 

Who plead for love and look for recompence, 

More than that tongue that more hath more expressed : 

learn to read what silent love hath writ ; 

To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit. 

(23.) 

Devouring Time, blunt thou the Lion's paws, 
And make the Earth devour her own sweet brood ; 
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce Tiger's jaws, 
And burn the long-lived Phoenix in her blood ; 
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, 
And do what e'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, 
To the wide world, and all her fading sweets ; 
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime : 
0, carve not with thy hours my Love's fair brow, 
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen ; 
Him in thy course untainted do allow, 
For Beauty's pattern to succeeding men ! 

Yet, do thy worst, old Time ; despite thy wrong, 
My Lore shall in my verse live ever young. 

(19.) 

1 ' 0, let my books be then the eloquence.' 

Steevens gives a decided preference to ' looks ' instead of books, because 
' the eloquence of looks would be more in unison with Love's fine wit, and 
much more poetical.' As if Skakspeare could have said that his looks 
looked for recompence ! The right expression tends to show that the Poet 
was here addressing the person to whom he did dedicate his books — i.e. the 
Earl of Southampton. 



LOVE'S TRIUMPH OVER TIME. 125 

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, 

So do our minutes hasten to their end, 

Each changing place with that which goes before 

In sequent toil all forwards do contend : 

Nativity, once in the main of light, 

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned, 

Crooked eclipses Against his glory fight, 

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound : 

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, 

And delves the parallels on Beauty's brow ; 

Feeds on the rarities of Nature's truth, 

And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow : 

And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand, 
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand. 

(60.) 

When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced 

The rich, proud cost of outworn buried age : 

When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed, 

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage ; 

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain 

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore, 

And the firm soil win of the watery main, 

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store ; 

When I have seen such interchange of state, 

Or state itself confounded to decay ; 

Euin hath taught me thus to ruminate, 

That time will come, and take my Love away : 

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose 
But weep to have that which it fears to lose. 

(6..) £>4 

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, 
But sad mortality o'er sways their power, 
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, 
Whose action is no stronger than a flower ? 
0, how shall Summer's honey breath hold out 
Against the wreckful siege of battering days, 
When rocks impregnable are not so stout, 
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays ? 



126 SHAKSPEARE'S S0NNET8. 

fearful meditation ! where, alack ! 

Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid? 

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back ? 

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid ? 

none, unless this miracle have might, 

That in black ink my Love may still shine bright. 

(65.) 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 
Of Princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme ; 
But you shall shine more bright in these contents 
Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time : 
When wasteful wars shall statues overturn, 
And broils root out the work of masonry, 
Nor Mars his sword nor War's quick fire shall burn 
The living record of your memory ! 
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity 
Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still find room 
Even in the eyes of all posterity, 
That wear this world out to the ending doom : 
So, till the judgment that yourself arise, 
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes, 

(55.) 



12; 



PERSONAL SONNETS. 

1592-3. 



SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL, CHIEFLY CONCERNING 
A RIVAL POET, ADJUDGED TO BE MARLOWE. 



I have grouped these sonnets as naturally as I can, 
according to my interpretation of the Poet's feeling. I 
do not say this series was written or sent exactly as it 
now stands. These may not have been all composed at 
the same time, but they are all on the same subject, and 
my arrangement gives them a probable beginning, pro- 
gress, and a fit conclusion ; the very thought, indeed, that 
Shakspeare loved to dwell on, and wished his friend to 
rest in ! He pleads here, in the last sonnet, as he sings 
so often, for personal love. He did not care for admira- 
tion as the writer of sonnets, and the Earl might read 
others for their style if he would only look at his when 
he was gone, ' for his love.' The subject is those other 
poets and writers who have followed the example of 
Shakspeare in celebrating the praise of the Earl his friend, 
or in seeking to publish under the protection of his name. 
It is not one poet only of whom the speaker is jealous, 
but, he says he has so often called on the Earl's name, 
and received so much inspiration for his verse, that every 
c alien pen ' and outsider have followed suit, and sought to 
set forth their poesy under his patronage. His eyes have 



128 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

not only taught the dumb to sing, but have made Igno- 
rance to soar, and added feathers to the wing of learning ; 
made majesty itself doubly majestic. 

But he pleads : — ' Be most proud of what I write, be- 
cause it is so purely your own. In the work of others 
you only mend the style, but you are all my art, and you 
set my rude ignorance as high as the art of the most 
learned. Whilst I alone sang of you my verse had all 
your grace, but now my Muse gives place to another, and 
my numbers are decayed. I know well enough that 
your virtue and kindness deserve the labour of a worthier 
pen, the praise of a better Poet ; yet what can the best of 
poets do ? He can only repay back to you that which he 
borrows from you.' In sonnet 3 of this group the poet 
singles out his great rival amongst those who are singing 
and dedicating to the Earl. ' I feel diffident,' he says, ' in 
writing of you when I know that a far better Poet is 
spending his strength in your praise, and singing at his 
best to make me silent. But since you are so gracious, 
there is room on the broad ocean of your worth for my 
small bark as well as for his of proud sail and lofty build. 
And if he ride hi safety whilst I am wrecked, the worst 
is this, it was my love that made me venture and caused 
my destruction.' He then questions himself as to the 
cause of his recent silence, and he attributes it to the fact 
of the Earl having ' filed up the lines ' of his rival's poetry ! 
Then comes another reason for his keeping quiet. His 
Muse is mannerly, and holds her tongue whilst better 
poets are singing. He thinks good thoughts whilst they 
speak good words. He is like the unlettered clerk, who 
by rote cries ' Amen ' to what his superior says. ' Eespect 
others then,' he urges, ' for what words are worth, but me 
for my dumb thoughts, too full for utterance ! I cannot 
lavish words easily, as those who do not feel what they 
say, and who only write from the fancy, and can thus 
cull the choicest flowers to deck their subject. As I am 



CAUSE OF HIS RECENT SILENCE. 129 

true in love I can but write truthfully. Let them say 
more in praise of you who are expecting to hear their 
words reechoed in praise of themselves. I am not writing 
with an eye to the sale of my sonnets. I never saw that 
you needed flattery, and therefore did not think of 
painting nature. I found that you exceeded the utmost 
a poet could say. Therefore have I been silent, and you 
have imputed this silence for my sin, which shall be most 
my glory, because I have let beauty speak for itself; 
there lives more life in one of your eyes alone than 
both your poets could put into any number of their 
verses. Who is it that says most? Which of us can 
say more than that you are you, and that you stand 
alone ? It is a poor pen that can lend nothing to its 
subject ; but in writing of you, it will do well if it can 
fairly copy what is already writ in you by Nature's 
own hand. The worst of it is, you are not satisfied with 
the simple truth thus told, you are fond of being written 
about, and this makes it hard for those who can only say 
the same old thing of you over and over again. I admit 
you were not married to my Muse, and that you have 
perfect freedom to accept as many dedications as you 
please. Your worth is beyond the reach of my words, 
and so no doubt you are forced to seek for something 
more novel. And do so, my dear friend ; yet when they 
have painted your portrait in flaunting colours, I shall say 
your truth was best mirrored in my unaffected truthful- 
ness. Let them practise their gross painting where cheeks , 
are in need of blood. If you live after I am dead and gone, 
and should once more happen to look over these poor 
lines of mine, and compare them with the newer poetry 
of the day, to find them far outstripped by later pens, 
keep them for the warm love in them, not for their lite- 
rary merit, and vouchsafe me but this one loving thought, 
' Had my friend lived he would have brought me something 
better than this ; something to compare with the best, 

k 



130 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

But since he died, and we have better poets, I will read 
their poetry for its style, and keep his for his love.' 

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse, 

And found such fair assistance in my verse, 

As every alien pen hath got my use, 

And under thee their poesy disperse ! 

Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing, 

And heavy Ignorance aloft to flee, 

Have added feathers to the Learn ed's wing, 

And given grace a double majesty: 

Yet be most proud of that which I compile, 

Whose influence is thine, and born of thee : 

In others' works thou dost but mend the style, 

And Arts with thy sweet graces graced be : 

But thou art all my Art, and dost advance 
As high as learning my rude ignorance. 

(78.) 

Whilst I alone did call upon thy aid, 

My verse alone had all thy gentle grace ; 

But now my gracious numbers are decayed, 

And my sick Muse doth give another place ! 

I grant, sweet Love, thy lovely argument 

Deserves the travail of a worthier pen ; 

Yet what of thee thy Poet doth invent, 

He robs thee of, and pays it thee again : 

He lends thee virtue, and he stole that word 

From thy behaviour ; beauty doth he give, 

And found it in thy cheek ; he can afford 

No praise to thee but what in thee doth live : 

Then thank him not for that which he doth say, 
Since what he owes thee thou thyself dost pay. 

(79.) 

0, how I faint when I of you do write, 
Knowing a better spirit doth use your name, 
And in the praise thereof spends all his might, 
To make me tongue-tied, speaking of your fame ! 
But since your worth — wide as tjie ocean is — 
The humble as the proudest sail doth bear, 



HIS GREAT RIVAL. 131 

My saucy Bark, inferior far to his, 

On your broad main doth wilfully appear ! 

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, 

Whilst he upon your soundless deep doth ride ; 

Or, being wrecked, I am a worthless boat, 

He of tall building, and of goodly pride : 
Then if he thrive, and I be cast away, 
The worst was this ; my love was my decay. 

(80.) 

Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, 
Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you, 
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, 
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew ? 
Was it his spirit by Spirits taught to write 
Above a mortal pitch that struck me dead ? 
No, neither he, nor his compeers by night 
Giving him aid, my verse astonished ! 
He, nor that affable-familiar Ghost 
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, 
As victors of my silence cannot boast; 
I was not sick of any fear from thence : 

But when your countenance filed up his line, 
Then lacked I matter : that enfeebled mine ! 

(86.) 

My tongue-tied Muse in manners holds her still, 

While comments of your praise, richly compiled, 

Eeserve their character with golden quill, 

And precious phrase by all the Muses filed ! 

I think good thoughts, while others write good words, 

And, like unlettered clerk, still cry c Amen ' 

To every line l that able spirit affords 

In polished form of well-refined pen : 

Hearing you praised, I say, ' 'tis so, His true,' 

And to the most of praise add something more ; 

But that is in my thought, whose love to you, 

Tho' words come hindmost, holds his rank before : 

1 ' Every line.' The Quarto reads ' every himne,' but Shakspeare knew 
that the most unlettered clerk would not cry ' Amen ' after the hymn. Also, 
* line ' is more consonant with the march of the verse and the emphasis on 
' every ' j therefore I venture to think that ' himne ' was a misprint. 

k 2 



132 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Then others for the breath of words respect, 
Me for my dumb thoughts speaking in effect. 

(85.) 

So is it not with me as with that Muse 

Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse ; 

Who heaven itself for ornament doth use, 

And every fair with his fair doth rehearse ; 

Making a couplement of proud compare 

With sun and moon, with earth and sea's rich gems, 

With April's firstborn flowers, and all things rare, 

That Heaven's air in this huge rondure hems : 

0, let me, true in love, but truly write, 

And then believe me, my Love is as fair 

As any mother's child, tho' not so bright 

As those gold candles fix'd in Heaven's air : 

Let them say more that like of hear-say well, 
I will not praise that purpose not to sell. 

(21.) 

I never saw that you did painting need, 
And therefore to your fair no painting set ! 
I found, or thought I found, you did exceed 
The barren tender of a Poet's debt ! 
And therefore have I slept in your report, 
That you yourself, being extant, well might show 
How far a modern quill doth come too short, 
Speaking of worth, what 1 worth in you doth grow : 
This silence for my sin you did impute, 
Which shall be most my glory, being dumb : 
For I impair not beauty being mute, 
When others would give life and bring a tomb : 
There lives more life in one of your fair eyes 
Than both your Poets can in praise devise. 

(83.) 

Who is it that says most ? which can say more 
Than this rich praise — that you alone are you ? 
In whose confine immured is the store 
Which should example where your equal grew ! 

1 ' What worth/ meaning which worth. I should hare thought the word 
' what ' might have been a misprint for ' which/ but was checked in changing 
it by the sound of the first word in the next line but one. 



OTHER COMPETITORS. 133 

Lean penury within that Pen doth dwell, 

That to his subject lends not some small glory ; 

But he that writes of you, if he can tell 

That you are you, so dignifies his story ; 

Let him but copy what in you is writ, 

Not making worse what Nature made so clear, 

And such a counterpart shall fame his wit, 

Making his style admired everywhere ! 

You to your beauteous blessings add a curse, 

Being fond on praise, which makes your praises worse. 

(84.) 

I grant thou wert not married to my Muse, 

And therefore may'st without attaint o'erlook 

The dedicated words which writers use 

Of their fair subject, blessing every Book: 

Thou art as fair in knowledge as in hue, 

Finding thy worth a limit past my praise, 

And therefore art enforced to seek anew 

Some fresher stamp of the time-bettering days ! 

And do so, Love ! yet when they have devised 

What strained touches rhetoric can lend, 

Thou, truly fair, wert truly sympathised 

In true-plain words, by thy true-telling friend ; 

And their gross painting might be better used 
Where cheeks need blood ; in thee it is abused. 

(82.) 

If thou survive my well-contented day, 

When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, 

And shalt by fortune once more re-survey 

These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, 

Compare them with the bettering of the time ; 

And tho' they be outstripped by every pen, 

Reserve 1 them for my love, not for their rhyme, 

Exceeded by the height of happier men : 

0, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought ! 

Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age, 

1 ' Reserve/ i.e. 'preserve.' 



134 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

A dearer birth than this his love had brought, 

To march in ranks of better equipage: 

But since he died, and Poets better prove, 
Theirs for their style I'll read ; his for his love. 

(32.) 

To get at the life within life of these sonnets we must 
look a little closer into this group, with a full belief that 
when our poet used particular words he freighted them 
with a particular meaning ; definiteness of purpose and 
truth of detail being the first recommendation and the 
last perfection of these sonnets. The pen with which he 
wrote for his patron w^as as pointed as that with which he 
wrote for his Theatre. 

In the first sonnet of this group Shakspeare is passing 
in review those writers who are under the patronage of 
the Earl, and he specifies two or three of these by person- 
ifying certain of their well-known qualities ; he is telling 
the Earl what his influence has wrought in divers ways : — 

< Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing, 
And heavy Ignorance aloft to flee, 
Have added feathers to the Learned's wing, 
And given grace a double majesty.' 

Now, I think it possible to identify who these four 
personifications represent. 

In the first line Shakspeare speaks of himself as having 
been dumb until the Earl turned his eyes — which are the 
light of the countenance — on him to make him break 
silence and soar and sing, by his encouragement of the 
poet to appear in public, and dedicate his first poem to 
his Patron. And the Earl not only did this, but he has 
made ' Heavy Ignorance ' take wings and fly aloft. This 
6 Heavy Ignorance ' on whom the Earl has worked nothing 
short of a miracle in lifting him from his native position 
as a plodder on the earth I surmise to be Florio, the trans- 
lator of Montaigne's Essays. ' Resolute John Elorio ! ' as 



FLORIO y. SIIAKSPEARE. 135 

he signed his name ; Thrasonical John Florio, as he was 
by nature. Florio dedicated works to the Earl of South- 
ampton, and was, on his own showing, greatly indebted 
to the Earl. In 1598 he inscribed his ' World of Words ' 
to that brave and bounteous peer, with this frank con- 
fession of the support he had received : — ' In truth I 
acknowledge an entire debt, not only of my best know- 
ledge, but of all ; yea, of more than I know or can, to 
your bounteous Lordship, in whose pay and patronage I 
have lived some years, to whom I owe and vowe the years 
I have to live. But, as to me and many more, the glorious 
and gracious sunshine of your Honour hath infused light 
and life.' 

Warburton conjectured that there was a literary set-to 
betwixt Florio and Shakspeare. Farmer also took this 
view : he tells us that Florio gave the first affront by 
saying, in his work entitled ' Second Fruits,' published in 
1591, 'The plays that they play in England are neither 
right comedies nor right tragedies, but representations of 
Histories without decorum! Shakspeare's Chronicle Flays 
correspond perfectly to these 'representations of Histories ; ' 
they were amongst the first in the field, and altogether the 
most successful ; and it is supposed, with great probability, 
that these are the works aimed at. The Poet took note 
of this gird, as is surmised, and quietly waited his oppor- 
tunity. In composing ' Love's Labour's Lost,' a year or 
two afterwards, he copied his character of Holofernes 
from the lay-figure of John Florio. Here the author of 
the 'World of Words,' a small dictionary of the Italian 
and English tongues, is represented as the pedant who 
had ' lived long on the alms-basket of words] and the 
' teacher of Italian,' which Florio was, and collector of 
proverbs and choice sayings, has been at a great feast 
of languages and stolen the scraps.' Warburton imagines 
that Florio gives the retort, not courteous, to Shakspeare's 
having made fun of him, by getting furious in a passage 



136 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

of his preface to the new edition of his ' World of Words,' 
1 598, in which he says : — ' There is another sort of leering 
curs that rather snarle than bite, whereof I could instance 
in one who, lighting on a good sonnet of a gentleman's, 
a friend of mine, that loved better to be a Poet than to be 
counted so, called the Author a Ehymer. Let Aristophanes 
and his comedians make plais, and scowre their mouths 
on Socrates, those very mouths they make to vilifie shall 
be the means to amplifie his virtue.' Warburton main- 
tained, as is quite warranted by the tone of the defence, 
that the sonnet was Florio's own. He further says, that 
Shakspeare paraded it in the ' extemporal epitaph on the 
Death of the Deer,' which begins : — 

' The preyful princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing 
pricket.' Love's Labour's Lost, act iv. sc. 2. 

This conjecture is not merely ingenious, but it is of ex- 
ceeding likelihood, and my reading of sonnet 78 may throw 
some light on the subject, from a far different point of 
view. If Shakspeare in public spoke slightingly of the 
Ehymer, we see him in this sonnet privately laughing in 
his sleeve at ' heavy Ignorance ' trying to take wings. I 
have not the least doubt that the sonnet was Florio's, nor 
that it was addressed to the Earl of Southampton, in 
whose pay and patronage he had then (1598) lived some 
years. It would be the Earl who told Florio that Shak- 
speare did not think much of his poetry, which nettled 
him wrathfully, much to the amusement of the two friends. 
We have, in Florio, almost on his own confession — al- 
though he tries a little to disguise himself — a most fitting 
candidate for identification as the ' heavy Ignorance,' 
which the Earl had taught to soar aloft. And if he did 
aspire to mount on the wings of rhyme in approaching 
his patron, there is no other competitor amongst those 
who dedicated to the Earl that comes near him in per- 



TOM NASH. 137 

soual appropriateness. It is curious to think, in connec- 
tion with this subject, that Shakspeare's own copy of 
Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays — now in the 
British Museum — should be the sole book in all the 
world known to have been in our Poet's possession, and 
the only one which has preserved his autograph for us. 1 

Having spoken of himself and heavy Elorio, Shakspeare 
comes to another pen which made him use the epithet of 
g Alien.' The Earl has not only made the dumb to sing 
and Ignorance to fly, in spite of its weight, but he has 
'added feathers to the Learned's wing.' I repeat, the Poet 
is enumerating some who have written under the Earl's 
patronage, and this he does by personifying their chief 
characteristics. And here we have a sly hit at Master 
Tom Nash. He wielded an ' alien ' pen with the spirit of 
an Ishmaelite. His hand was against every man, in- 
cluding Shakspeare. He it was who set up so conspicu- 
ously for i Learning ; ' he was one of the learned sort ; and 
he was hitting continually at those who had not received a 
scholastic nurture, from which, however, he himself had 
been weaned before his time. In his ' Pierce Penilesse ' 
p. 42, he exclaims, e Alas, poor Latinless Authors ! ' In his 
epistle to the 4 Astrophel and Stella ' of Sidney, he says, 
speaking of the works of Sextus Empedocles, ' they have 
been lately translated into English for the benefit of un- 
learned writers ' (not readers). The Nash and Greene 
clique had been the first to attack Shakspeare on the score 
of his little country grammar ; his education at a country 
grammar-school ; and charged him with plucking the 

1 Florio dedicated his first work to the Earl of Leicester in 1578, as 
the 'maidenhead of his industry.' The man who did that might well 
think the 'posteriors of the day ' for what the vulgar call the afternoon was 
* congruent and measurable ; a word well-adled, choice, sweet, and apt ; picked, 
spruce, and peregrinate.' In 1611 he withdrew his dedication to Southamp- 
ton, and inscribed his 'World of Words' to the 'Imperial Majesty of the 
highest-bom Princess Anna of Denmark, crowned Queen of England, Scot- 
land, France, and Ireland.' 



138 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

feathers from the wing of Learning for the purpose of 
beautifying himself — the upstart Crow ! And Nash is here 
personified in his own chosen image. The Poet makes an 
allusion which the Earl and his friends would appreciate, 
and he ccvertly returns the borrowed plumes. He says, in 
effect, that the Earl has, in patronising Nash, returned 
those feathers to the wing of Learning, which he, Shak- 
speare, had been publicly charged with purloining. In a 
second allusion he says the Earl's favour has set the rude 
' ignorance ' at which his rivals laughed as high as the 
learning of which they boasted. 

In ' Pierce Penilesse, his supplication to the Devil,' we 
shall find that towards the end of 1592, Nash had not 
only found a Patron to praise, but had been in some per- 
sonal companionship with ' my Lord ' — had been staying 
with him in the country for ' fear of infection.' This 
was at Croydon, where his play of ' Will Summers' last 
Will and Testament ' was privately produced in the 
autumn of 1592, to all appearance, under the patronage 
of Southampton. The good luck has somewhat soft- 
ened his ' Alien pen ' of the earlier pages of that work, 
which is bitter in its abuse of patrons. At page 42, 
Nash writes, ' If any Mecaenas bind me to him by his 
bounty, or extend some round liberality to me worth 
the speaking of, I will do him as much honour as 
any poet of my beardless years shall in England.' He 
made his supplication to the Devil because he had not 
then found his Patron Saint. At page 90, he has found 
his man. He calls him ' one of the bright stars of 
nobility, and glistering attendants on the true Diana.' He 
is also 6 the matchless image of honour, and magnificent 
rewarder of virtue ; Jove's eagle-born Ganymede ; thrice 
noble Amyntas ; most courteous Amyntas ! ' Tocld sup- 
poses that Ferdinando, Earl of Derby, was meant ; because 
Spenser, in his ' Collin Clout's come home again,' calls him 
by the common pastoral name of 'Amyntas.' But there 



SOUTHAMPTON'S PATRONAGE OF NASII. 139 

is nothing known to connect Nash with this Earl, as there 
is with Shakspeare's patron and friend. The description 
fits no one so perfectly as it does the young Earl of South- 
ampton. It sets before us the very image of youth 
which Shakspeare calls more lovely than Adonis ; Gany- 
mede having been the most beautiful of mortal youths, 1 
Jove's boy-beloved ; the Court's ' fresh ornament ' of 
Shakspeare's first sonnet is here one of the ' glistering at- 
tendants on the true Diana.' The 'matchless image of 
Honour ' corresponds exactly to Southampton, the ana- 
gram made out of whose name was the ' Stamp of Honour.' 
Also, he is supposed not to have been heard of as yet out 
of the echo of the Court. We know that Nash was under 
the patronage of Shakspeare's friend. In the year 1594, 
he dedicated his ' Life of Jack Wilton ' to the Earl of 
Southampton, with a reference to the difference betwixt 
it and earlier writings, and this work, though not pub- 
lished until 1594, was dated 1593. So that I can have no 
doubt of ' Pierce Penilesse ' being really inscribed to the 
Earl of Southampton in person if not by name, or that 
Nash's was the ' Alien pen ' that had followed Shakspeare 
in writing privately to the Earl. What other ' poesy ' 
Nash may have sought to ' disperse ' under the Earl's pa- 
tronage I know not. He must have written much that 
has not come down to us. He informs us, in his ' Pierce 
Penilesse,' that his Muse was despised and neglected, his 
pains not regarded, or but slightly rewarded. Meres 
places him with the poets of the time, as one of the best 
for comedy. Harvey calls him a Poet, and Drayton ac- 
cords him a leaf of the Laurel. But I hold that the son- 
net at the end of ' Pierce Penilesse ' is addressed to the 
Earl of Southampton, 2 and that this method of passing 

1 Here, then, is one" answer to Boaden's assertion that the Earl of South- 
ampton could not have been the youthful nohle who was beloved by Shak- 
speare — because he was not sufficiently handsome ! 

' Pursuing yesternight, with idle eyes, 
The Fairy Singer's stately-tuned verse, 



140 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

off his poetry gives the aptness to Shakspeare's use of the 
word ' disperse.' It may be the ' dedicated words that 
writers use,' likewise contains a hit at Nash's eulogistic 
hyperbole. The ' Life of Jack Wilton ' was inscribed with 
a most high-flown dedication to the Earl, whom he called 
fc a dear lover and cherisher, as well of the lovers of poets 
as of poets themselves ; ' and he adds, ' Incomprehensible is 
the height of your spirit, both in heroical resolution and 
matters of conceit Unrepriveably perished that book, what- 
soever to waste paper, which on the diamond rock of your 
judgment disastrously chanceth to be shipwrecked.' 

The fourth of this group I hold to be Marlowe. The 
Earl has ' given grace a double majesty.' His ' eyes ' 
have made the dumb to sing, heavy Ignorance to mount, 
added feathers to the wing of ' Learning ' itself, and given 
to grace a double majesty. It is a somewhat singular ex- 
pression. The ' double majesty ' is very weighty to apply 
to such a word as ' grace ! ' It would not be used without 
an intended stress. A poet is here praised for the grace 
of his manner and majesty of his music. The chief cha- 
racteristic of his poetry is that it is majestic. The 
very quality of all others that we, following the Eliza- 
bethans, associate with the march of Marlowe's ' mighty 
line ! ' But the patron, Shakspeare says, has exalted 



And viewing, after chapmen's wonted guise, 
What strange contents the title did rehearse j 
1 straight leapt over to the latter end, 
Where, like the quaint comedians of our time 
That when their play is done do fall to rhyme, 
I found short lines to sundry Nobles penned, 
Whom he as special mirrors singled forth 
To be the patrons of his poetry. 
I read them all, and reverenced their worth, 
Yet wondered he left out thy memory ! 

But therefore guessed I he suppressed thy name, 
Because few words might not comprise thy fame.' 

A delightful confession and an interesting picture of Nash on the look-out for 
some one to flatter, and hurrying eagerly over the list of Spenser's patrons ! 



POET. 141 

the poet, and made his poetry doubly majestic, or twice 
what it was before. If Marlowe be the rival poet of 
these sonnets — one of the two spoken of by Shakspeare 
as 'both your poets' — it follows that he is the poet of 
these four lines, the sense of which I should read thus : — , 

e Thine eyes that taught the dumb (myself ) on high to sing, 

And heavy Ignorance {Florid) aloft to flee, 

Have added feathers to the Learned's (Nash's) wing, 

And given Marlowe double majesty.' 
It will be seen that the first two are of the past, the Earl 
has at the present moment patronised the latter two ; 
these are new writers for him. These facts will sum up 
the time, standpoint, and motive of these sonnets. Time, 
just after the publication of ; Pierce Penilesse,' in 1592, 
and before Marlowe's death in 1593. Motive, jealousy 
because the ' aliens ' in feeling had invaded the sanctuary 
of his friendship. But there is one amongst those whom 
the Earl patronises that Shakspeare acknowledges to be 
a great poet, a better poet than himself, an able spirit, 
whose singing has sufficed to silence our Poet, or rather, 
the marked interest which the patron has taken in his 
poetry has touched him to the quick. 

Boaden, with his jaunty presumption and high-handed 
way, assures us that the c better spirit ' and great rival 
poet here spoken of was poor Samuel Daniel ; because he 
was brought up at Wilton House, and inscribed his ' De- 
fence of Ehyme ' to William Herbert, in 1603, and because, 
in the 82nd sonnet, Shakspeare ' hints at the actual ground 
of his jealousy.' But if these sonnets should be those 
which Meres mentioned in 1598, Shakspeare could not 
have been disturbed by Daniel's ' dedicated words ' in 
1603. Besides which, the 'Defence of Ehyme' was a 
prose work, and the dedication of a prose work cannot, in 
this rival's case, be the actual ground of jealousy. It is 
the proud full sail of his great verse bound for the prize 
of his patron, and the fact that the patron has touched up 



142 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the rival's lines with his silver file, which stuck in Shak- 
speare's throat, and kept him silent. Again, Steevens had 
remarked that perhaps sonnet 86 might refer to the cele- 
brated Dr. Dee's pretended intercourse with an angel, 
and other familiar spirits, and Boaden says : — ' There can 
be no doubt about it, the fact is upon record. Queen 
Elizabeth and the Pembroke family were Dr. Dee's chief 
patrons ; whose exalted minds were not exempt from the 
mania of the times, which the sounder philosophy of 
Shakspeare led him to denounce.' But there is every 
doubt about it. It is utterly and absolutely opposed to 
the spirit of Shakspeare, as revealed in the personal son- 
nets, that he should sneer at his patron, or denounce his 
practices, even if he had been a believer in Dr. Dee ; and, 
secondly, it is the poet whose tastes are wizardry, and 
whose work ranges above a mortal pitch, by aid of the 
spirits that visit him nightly. Nothing is said of the 
patron in the matter ; nothing implied. Also, it is a sup- 
position perfectly improbable that Shakspeare should have 
pointed out the ' proud full sail ' of Daniel's (of all others) 
6 great verse,' or characterise it as written - above a mortal 
pitch,' except ironically, which cannot be, or else the 
' all-too-precious you ' would lie open to suspicion likewise. 
The whole sonnet is seriously in earnest. Boaden does 
not take it to be sarcastic ; he has no doubt that Shak- 
speare actually vailed his bonnet, not only to Spenser, but 
to Daniel and Chapman, to Harington and Fairfax ! 
Lastly, to all appearance, Daniel did not seek to ' dis- 
perse ' his ' poesy ' under the Earl of Pembroke's patro- 
nage, if he inscribed a prose work to that nobleman; or, 
if he did seek, the young Earl must have grown shy of 
him ; possibly because Daniel had been brought up in the 
family. 

In a letter of this poet's, addressed to the Earl of 
Devonshire (1604), he is sorry for having offended his 
patron by -pleading before the Council, when called in 



CHARACTERISTICS OF MARLOWE. 143 

question for the Tragedy of Pliilotas, that he had read 
part of it to the Earl (of Devonshire), and says he has 
no other friend in power to help him! If this had' been 
the great poet of whom Shakspeare and William Herbert 
are supposed to have thought so highly, and whose rela- 
tion had been so intimate, how then should poor 
Daniel have had no other friend in power to help him, 
when the friendship of Herbert had been sufficiently great 
to make Shakspeare jealous? Nothing, save the blindest 
belief in the Herbert hypothesis, which of necessity shifts 
the elate at which most of the sonnets were written, could 
possibly obscure so plain a fact as that this group of 
sonnets must have been composed by Shakspeare's ' pupil 
pen ' before he had taken his place amongst the poets of 
his time, and that. Marlowe is the rival poet of these 
lines. 

That Marlowe is the other poet of sonnets 80 and 86 
is shown by the most circumstantial evidence in every 
line and touch of our poet's description. Marlowe was 
a dramatic celebrity before Shakspeare ; he had about 
him something of that glow of Giorgione's dawn, the pro- 
mise of which was only fulfilled in the perfect day of 
Titian ; and there can be no doubt that Shakspeare 
looked up to him, and was somewhat led captive by 
his lofty style. He would in those younger years fully 
appreciate the delicious bodily beauty of many of Mar- 
lowe's lines, like those in which Faustus describes his 
visionary Helen. He has, in ' As you like it,' a kindly 
thought for the dead poet, and quotes a line from Mar- 
lowe's unfinished poem, ' Hero and Leander,' with which 
he may have been acquainted in MSS., because it was 
composed for the Earl of Southampton. He would be 
the first to give him all praise for having, in his use of 
blank verse, struck out a new spring of the national 
Helicon with the impatient pawing-hoof of his fiery war- 
horse of a Pegasus ; but for which Shakspeare himself 



144 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

might possibly have remained more of a rhymer, and not 
attained his full dramatic stature. Nothing could better 
give us our poet's view of himself and the rival, than the 
image drawn from Drake and the Spanish Dons ; after- 
wards used by Fuller in his description of Shakspeare and 
Ben Jonson. Marlowe is here represented as the great 
portly Spanish galleon, of tall build and Ml sail, and 
goodly pride, and Shakspeare is the small trim bark — the 
6 saucy bark ' that can float with the ' shallowest help ; ' 
venture daringly on the broad ocean, and skip lightly round 
the vast bulk of his rival. The comparison is full of our 
poet's modesty and lurking humour. He considers his 
rival as far superior to himself, and speaks of him as 
the ' better spirit,' or the greater poet of assured fame. 
Shakspeare, it appears, has been silent for some time, and 
the Earl has reproached him for it. Meanwhile, others 
have been singing and dedicating to the patron ; and this 
' better spirit ' has been spending all his might with the 
intention of praising or honouring the patron in whose 
name he is writing. He has not only flourished in the 
Earl's favour, but the Earl himself has lent his hand to 
polish up, or give the finishing touch to, something of the 
rival poet's. 

Shakspeare asks : — 

6 Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, 
Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you, 
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse ? 
Was it his spirit, by Spirits taught to write 
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead ? 
No : neither he, nor his compeers by night 
Giving him aid, my verse astonished, — 
He, nor that affable-familiar Ghost 
Which nightly gulls him with intelligence, 
As victors of my silence cannot boast ; 
I was not sick of any fear from thence ! 
But when your countenance filed up his line, 
Then lacked I matter ; that enfeebled mine.' 



MEPIIISTOPHILES THE 'AFFABLE FAMILIAR" SPIRIT. 145 

If we believe that Shakspeare had any power of com- 
pelling spirits to appear dramatically — any mastery of 
stroke in rendering human likeness — any exact and cun- 
ning use of epithet — how can we doubt that the name to 
be written under that portrait is Christopher Marlowe ? 
Or, that his is the poetry whose extravagant tone Shak- 
speare accounted • above a mortal pitch ? ' 

Those hues give us the very viva effigies, not only of 
the Poet (• he of tall building and of goodly pride ' — 
sonnet 80), but of the man whose reputation was so 
marked, the author who had eaten of the forbidden fruit 
of knowledge, the poetry characterised in the precise lan- 
guage used by the poets of that time. It is a triple 
account, that only unites in one man. and that man is 
Marlowe — far and away beyond all possible competition. 
In his lust after power, and with his unhallowed glow 
of imagination, IMarlowe became a student of the Black 
Arts, and a practiser of necromancy — he was reputed to 
have dealings with the Devil. Xo doubt his Dr. Faustus 
gave a darker colour to such report, and in the eyes of 
many as well as in their conversation, the man and his 
creation became one. They would commonly call him 
' Faustus,' just as they called him ; Tambiudaine.' And 
this is exactly how Shakspeare has treated the subject. In 
his dramatic way, he has identified ^larlowe with Faustus, 
and he presents him upon the stage where, in vision, if 
it be not an actual fact, the Play is running at the rival 
Theatre, whilst the Poet is composing his sonnet. The 
conditions on which Faustus sells his soul are. that Mephis- 
tophiles shall be his familiar spirit, who shall do all his 
behests, execute all his commands, bring all that he re- 
quires, be in his house or chamber invisible until wanted, 
and then he is to appear in whatsoever shape Faustus 
pleases. And Mephistophiles promises to be the slave of 
Faustus, and give him more than he has wit to ask. A 
yqyj plausible familiar ghost or attendant spirit ! Thus our 

L 



146 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Poet sees the Doctor, or Marlowe, and his familiar ' gulling 
hirn nightly ' with his promises, and such pleasant intelli- 
gence as that in Hell is all manner of delight! And the 
drama is once more played, so to speak, in the sonnet. 
We have Marlowe identified as the poet who talked of 
deriving help from spirits, by spirits taught to write above 
a mortal pitch — the poet of ' Faustus,' with his 4 affable 
familiar ghost ' and ' execrable art ' — Mephistophiles^ his 
visitant that gulled him nightly — and the poet of that 
' proud full sail ' or resounding march of his great verse, 
which is here rendered according to the tenor of all con- 
temporary description, and identified by the characteristic 
that is uppermost in the minds of all who are acquainted 
with the King Cambyses vein of Marlowe. 

It may be objected that, although we can identify 
Florio, Nash, and others, as having dedicated to the Earl 
of Southampton, there is no external evidence to prove 
that Marlowe ever did. It may be that his early death 
caused much to be hidden from our sight that was known 
to Shakspeare when he wrote these sonnets. Marlowe 
may have Englished the Elegies of Ovid for the Earl at 
his own particular request, and died before they were 
printed. He may also have written the love-song ' Come 
live with me,' for Southampton, and that be the very 
reason why Shakspeare wrote the answer to it — for he 
most assuredly did write the answer containing the line 
6 In reason ripe, in folly rotton,' in spite of the daring of 
those adventurers in search of Ealeigh's poetry, who are 
as bold as was that ' Shepherd of the ocean ' himself in 
gathering up treasure of another kind. Further, the de- 
scription of this poet in his relationship to the patron does 
not so much dwell on what he has done for the Earl as 
what he is at present doing. He is at work in the Earl's 
name when the poet writes sonnet 80, and Shakspeare is 
aware that the rival is then spending all his might doing 
his utmost to honour the Earl and make our Poet ' tongue- 



MARLOWE'S 'HERO AND LEAXDER.' 147 

tied ' in speaking of his patron's fame. lie alludes ebiefly 
to work in progress, not to work done. There is rivalry 
in a race then being run, and Shakspeare says if the rival 
should be victor over him he will know and be able to 



The worst was this, my love was my decay. 

In sonnet 8 6, likewise, the Poet speaks of the rival bark as 
being ' bound for the prize of all-too-precious you,' not as 
having touched the shore, or reached haven. In both these 
sonnets the rival poet is working for the Earl, and there 
is nothing improbable in supposing that Marlowe's ' Hero 
and Leander ' was intended to be dedicated to Southamp- 
ton ; that he was writing it when death cut short the poet's 
life, and the poem was left unfinished, and that Shakspeare 
was acquainted with the fragment in MS. and so quoted 
from it the line ' who ever loved that loved not at first 
sight,' with an acknowledgement to the ' Dead Shepherd ' 
in ' As you Like it.' 

There are further reasons why Marlowe should be this 
rival poet. 

Shakspeare tells the Earl that his silence was not owing 
to the fact of the rival's being reputed to write by the help 
of spirits and ; metaphysical aid,' nor that he was the 
great Dramatist, and author of ' Faustus,' nor yet that he 
knew the ; proud full sail ' of the rival's ' great verse ' was 
bound for the Earl as his intended prize ; it was none of 
these things that did his ' ripe thoughts ' in his c brain 
inhearse,' or cause them to be still-born. 

This seeking of a ' fresher stamp of the time-bettering 
days ' — this accepted ' travail of a worthier pen ; ' these 
lofty passionate braggart words of dedication ; the 'strained 
touches ' and the ' gross painting ' make the true love of 
Shakspeare's heart feel a little hurt ; but these things have 
not stirred his jealousy. There is a deeper cause for that. 
The Earl's countenance has « filed up ' the rival's poetry ; 

L 2 



148 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

which must mean more than that he has received it and 
smiled graciously upon it. He says explicitly that it was 
not the rival's being bound for the Earl, nor the dedication, 
intended or accepted, that made him fearful ; but when 
the Earl undertook to ' file up ' his rival's line, that was 
indeed a different matter. 

This it was, Shakspeare confesses, that probed his in- 
firmity — made him feel jealous, and keep silence. That 
there is a touch of jealousy and a good deal of rivalry in 
these sonnets relating to the ' other poet,' is apparent and 
must be admitted. And in this aspect there is no poet 
who could make such an appeal so justly to Shakspeare's 
feelings as Marlowe. Marlowe was the rival poet at the 
opposition theatre. He was then the Shakspeare of the 
English drama, in the full flush and high tide of his brief 
and brilliant success. ' Tamburlaine the Great,' ' Faustus,' 
the 'Jew of Malta,' ; Edward II.,' had come crowding on 
the stage one after the other, with Alleyn playing his best 
in the principal characters. Heywood, writing forty years 
afterwards, celebrates Marlowe as the best of poets, and 
Alleyn as the best of players. Shakspeare was far more 
likely to be jealous for his Theatre than for himself, and, 
if the Earl had looked over one of his rival's works and 
suggested amendments, this would touch the player as 
well as the natural man in Shakspeare, and cause him to 
keep that silence which has been imputed to him as his sin, 
and to show this feeling of jealousy when he next ad- 
dressed the Earl. My conclusion respecting these three 
personifications is, that Florio's is possible, Nash's pro- 
bable, Marlowe's certain. Florio's is a guess ; Nash's an 
inference ; Marlowe's a demonstration. 

In this group of sonnets we may learn one or two things 
by word of mouth, so to say, from Shakspeare himself, 
which readers will do wisely to remember. There can 
be no doubt that the Poet is here speaking personally of 
his own feelings, and of his own writings. His whole ar- 



THE POET'S PLEA FOP TRUTH TO NATURE. 149 

gument is for truth to nature. And he most emphatically 
rebukes those who have assumed that he perpetrated all 
kinds of sonneteering nonsense, and exceeded all others 
in his fantastic exaggeration: that he transcended all the 
amorous wooers of the Ideal, and lavished his love in 
ardent language upon airy nothings. In these sonnets he 
tells us that he writes of and from reality. It is not with 
him, he says, as with that Muse ' stirred by a painted 
beauty to his verse,'" by which he means that he celebrates 
no mere visionary image or fiction of the fancy, as 
Drayton for example did. in his sonnets to 'Idea,' 1 and 
likewise the author of ' Licia, or Poems of Love,' printed 
in 1593, which work consists of 52 sonnets in honour of 
the admirable and singular virtues of the writer's lady, 
Ml of fervent affection and passionate praise. In his 
address to the reader the author says, ' If thou muse what 
my Licia is, take her to be some Diana, at the least chaste ; 
or some Minerva, no Venus, fairer far. It may be she is 
Learning's image, or some heavenly wonder, which the 
precisest may not dislike ; perhaps, under that name, I 
have shadowed Discipline.' 2 So is it not with me, 
Shakspeare replies, and. therefore, I do not imitate those 
who use heaven itself for ornament, and couple all the 
glories of earth with their imaginary Mistress, for the 
sake of making proud comparisons in her favour. I 
am only rich in reality, and being truly in love can only 

1 Published, says Pitson, with the ' Shepherd's Garland," and "Roland's 
Sacrifice to the Xine Muses/ in a volume printed for T. Woodcocke, 1593 : 
4to. Drayton was amusingly anxious to show that he was ' stirred by a 
p a inted beauty to his verse/ and that his love vras only an 'Idea.' Shak- 
speare is as earnest in asserting that he writes from reality. The greatest 
master of Reality is here the advocate of Realism in Art: the soul of sin- 
cerity himself, he cannot tolerate that which is insincere in others. 

2 Thomas Watson — he who, according to the taste of Steevens ; was ' a 
more elegant sonnetteer than Shakspeare,' also published in 1593 the ' Tears 
of Fancy, or Love disdained/ in sixty sonnets. Our Poet may have had 
this work in view, as well as the ' Licia.' when protesting that his sonnets 
were not mere fancv-work, but the outcome of real feeling. 



150 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

write truthfully. This sonnet contains an answer to those 
who hold that the flowery tenderness and exquisite spring- 
tints of sonnets 98 and 99 were devoted to a man as the 
object of them. The Poet here says he does not compare 
his friend ' with April's first-born flowers and all things 
rare, that Heavens air in this huge rondure hems. 1 He 
protests as plainly as any living author could, who might 
write to the ' Times,' or ' Athenaeum,' of to-day, that he 
does not use the ' gross painting ' the ' strained touches 
Ehetoric can lend.' It is the very opposite of his nature 
and art to write in the extravagant style and ' high- 
astounding terms,' the ' huffing, braggart, puft language ' 
that Marlowe so often used, whose verses, as Greene had 
said in 1588: — 'jet on the stage in tragical buskins; 
everv word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bow- 
Bells.' May we not also here read a potent protest against 
such a work as ' Titus Andronicus ' being ascribed to 
Shakspeare ? 

This group of sonnets was written before the death of 
Marlowe, in June 1593. I am of opinion that sonnet 
80 marks the moment when Shakspeare was about to 
embark with his first literary venture, the ' Venus and 
Adonis.' If he be wrecked, if he sinks whilst Marlowe 
swims, he says, the cause will have been his love for the 
Earl ; not literary vanity. 



NOTE. 

I think there is proof in both sonnets and plays that Shakspeare had read 
Marlowe's two sestiads of ' Hero and Leander ' in MSS. For example, 
compare sonnets 4 and 6 with these lines : 

' Treasure is abused 
When misers keep it : being put to loan, 
In time it will return us two for one.' 

1 But this fair gem, sweet in the loss alone, 
When you fleet hence, can be bequeathed to none.' 

Sonnets 20 and 53 with these lines : ' 

' Some swore he was a maid in man's attire, 
For in his looks were all that men desire.' 

And sonnet 80 with these : 

' A stately-builded ship, well-rigged and tall, 
The ocean maketh more majestical.' 

Also, readers of ' Romeo and Juliet ' will recognise Marlowe's ' gallop 
amain' and 'dark night is Cupid's day.' I cannot doubt that Shakspeare 
was acquainted with this poem years before it was printed, nor that he 
characterises its sensuous grace, and refers to it as having been written for 
the Earl of Southampton. In dedicating the published book to Sir Thomas 
Walsingham, Edward Blunt hints that the poem has had ' other foster 
countenance,' but that his name is likely to prove more { agreeable and 
thriving ' to the work, which was the view of a sensible publisher, for the 
other fostering countenance — Southampton's — might not have shed so 
favourable an influence in 1598, the year in which the fragment was first 
printed. 

Having omitted to express the thought in the text, I would here note my 
conjecture, that the miserable death of Marlowe is referred to in i A Mid- 
summer Night's Dream, 1 where we meet with — 

' The theice-theee Muses mourning for the death 
Of Learning, late deceased in beggary ! ' 

That disreputable end of one who ought to have taken a nobler leave of 
the world, was indeed a subject for a 'satire keen and critical.' And surely 
this was the Poet who, in sonnet 85 (p. 131), is said to write with '■ golden 
quill and precious phrase by all the iilses filed?' 



152 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



A PERSONAL SONNET. 

1593-4. 

SHAKSPEARE IS ABOUT TO WRITE ON THE COURT- 
SHIP OF HIS FRIEND SOUTHAMPTON, ACCORDING 
TO THE EARL'S SUGGESTION. 



' And now I will unclasp a secret book.'' 

Turning to the Book of Sonnets, the reader will see 
that we can read them straight on as Personal Sonnets up 
to the 26th, but with the 27th we are all adrift ; the 
spirit changes so obviously as to necessitate a change of 
speaker. Till now the feeling was one of repose in the 
affection which the Poet celebrated. Here the feeling has 
all a lover's restlessness. In the previous sonnets we have 
not been left in doubt as to the sex of the person ad- 
dressed ; there were many allusions to its being a Man. 
We now meet with sonnet after sonnet, and series after 
series, in which there is no mention of sex. The feeling 
expressed is more passionate, and the phrase has become 
more movingly tender ; far closer relationship is sung, and 
yet the object to whom these sonnets are written never 
appears in person. There is neither ' man ' nor ' boy,' 
' him ' nor ' his.' How is this ? Surely it is not the wont 
of a stronger feeling and greater warmth of affection to 
fuse down all individuality and lose sight of sex. That 
is not the way of Nature's or of Shakspeare's working. 
Here is negative evidence that the speaker is not ad- 
dressing a man. The internal evidence and poetic proof 
are in favour of its being a Woman. There is a spirit too 



THE WITNESS WITHIN. 153 

delicate for the grosser ear of a man. The imagery is 
essentially feminine. There is a fondness in the feeling, 
and a preciousness in the phrase that tell of ' Love's coy 
touch.' Also there are secret stirrings of nature which 
influence us as they might if we were in the presence of 
a beautiful woman disguised : little tell-tales of conscious- 
ness and whisperings in the air. Many of the sonnets 
addressed by Shakspeare to the Earl are as glowing in 
affection, as tender in phrase as could well be written 
from man to man, but there is a subtle difference be- 
twixt these and others that, as I shall show, are addresssd 
to a woman. The conditions under which the Poet 
created did not permit of his branding them with the 
outward signs of sex ; but the difference exists in the 
secret spirit of them. We continually catch a breath of 
fragrance, as though we were treading upon invisible 
violets, and are conscious of a perfusive feminine grace ; 
whilst a long and loving acquaintanceship brings out the 
touches and tendernesses of difference, distinct as those 
notes of the nightingale that make her song so peerless 
amongst those of other birds. There is a music here 
such as could only have found its perfect chord in a 
woman's heart. Once we shut our eyes to the supposi- 
tion that all these sonnets were meant for a man, we 
shall soon feel that in numbers of them the heart of a 
lover is going forth with thrillings ineffable towards a 
woman, and, in the unmistakeable cry, we shall hear the 
voice of that love which has no like— the absorbing, 
absolute, all-containing Love that woman alone engen- 
ders in the heart of a man. Xot that Shakspeare is here 
wooing a woman in person. He would not have done 
that and left out the sex. They are written on South- 
ampton's courtship. It is not Shakspeare who speaks, 
but Southampton to his lady. This will account for the 
impassioned tenderness, and, at the same time, for the 
absence of all mention of the sex of the person addressed, 



154 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

which would naturally result from the poet's delicacy of 
feeling, or, from a reticence agreed upon. 

There will be nothing very startling in the proposition 
that our Poet devoted sonnets to his friend's love for Eliza- 
beth Vernon, if we think for a moment of his words 
addressed in public to Southampton, in the year 1594. 
' What I have to do is yours ; being part in all I have 
devoted yours.' Now, if he alluded to his sonnets in that 
dedication of ' Lucrece,' as I maintain he did, there is but 
one way in which the allusion could apply. He would 
not have promised to write a book, or a series of sonnets, 
and speak of them as a part of what he had to clo for 
the Earl if they were to be mere poetical exercises or 
personal to himself. Such must have been altogether 
fugitive — the subjects unknown beforehand. Whereas he 
speaks of the work as devoted to the Earl, something that 
is fixed, and fixed, too, by, or with the knowledge of the 
person addressed. This I take to refer to the fact that, 
at the Earl's suggestion, he had then agreed to write 
dramatic sonnets on the subject of Southampton's court- 
ship. And as they were in hand when he dedicated his 
second poem to Southampton, I infer that they were com- 
menced in 1593. 

If my theory of the sonnets be true, the sonnets them- 
selves ought to yield the most convincing proof that it is 
so. They should tell their own tale, however marvellous 
it may be ; nay, they should speak with a more certain 
sound because of the mystery. The voice should be all 
the clearer if it comes from the cloud. This they will do. 
Only we must have the courage to believe that Shakspeare 
knew what he was writing about, and that he was accus- 
tomed to use the English language in its plainest sense, 
except where words would flower double on account of 
the fulness of Ins wit. We must not lose sight of the 
literal truth and substance of his meaning in following the 
figurative shadow, or we shall quite miss the palpable 



A CHANGE IN THE POET'S MODE OF WRITING. 155 

facts, and find ourselves in the position of others who have 
had to make all sorts of excuses for Shakspeare's indefi- 
niteness. Let us only remember that these sonnets are 
by the writer who got nearest to nature through the close- 
ness of his grasp of reality ; and a false interpretation has 
hitherto hindered our seeing that his grip was as close, 
his feeling as true, his language as literal here as in 
his dramas. Then we shall find that they do in very 
truth tell their own story according to the theory now 
proposed and set forth. 'Not merely in the underlying 
evidence — the inner facts which can only be paralleled in 
the outer life of the different speakers, the distinct indi- 
viduality of the characters pour tray ed — but it actually 
stares us in the face on the surface, so close to us that we 
have overlooked it by being too far-sighted. 

I purpose showing that after our Poet had written a 
certain number of personal sonnets to the Earl, his dear 
friend, advising him to marry, and the Earl had met and 
fallen in love with the ' faire Mistress Vernon,' Shak- 
speare then began, at the Earl's own request, to write 
sonnets dramatically on the subject of the Earl's passion, 
and the trials, ' tiffs/ and misadventures of a pair of star- 
crossed lovers, with the view of enhancing their pleasures 
and enriching their pains by his poetic treatment of their 
love's tender and troublous history. The intimacy, as we 
have seen from the sonnets which are personal, was of 
the nearest and dearest kind that can exist between man 
and man. Were there no proof to be cited it would 
not be so great a straining of probability to imagine the 
intimacy close and secret enough for Shakspeare to write 
sonnets on Southampton's love, in this impersonal in- 
direct way, as it is to suppose it was close enough for 
them to share one mistress, and for Shakspeare to write 
sonnets for the purpose of proclaiming the mutual dis- 
grace and perpetuating the sin and shame. It might 
fairly be argued also that the intimacy being of this secret 



156 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

and sacred sort, would naturally take a greater delight in 
being illustrated in the unseen way of a dramatic treat- 
ment. It would be sweeter to the Earl's affection ; more 
perfectly befitting the Poet's genius ; the celebration of 
the marriage of two souls in the most inner sanctuary of 
friendship. 

But there is proof. 

For all who have eyes to see, the 38th sonnet tells us 
most explicitly that the writer has done with the subject 
of the earlier sonnets. There is no further need of ad- 
vising the Earl to marry when he is doing all he can 
to get married. But, says the Poet, he cannot be at 
a loss for a subject so long as the Earl lives to pour 
into his verse his own argument. The force of the 
expression 'pourst into my verse,' shows that this is in 
no indirect suggestive way, but that the Earl has now 
begun to supply his own argument for Shakspeare's son- 
nets. This argument is too ' excellent,' too choice, in 
its nature for 'every vulgar paper to rehearse.' Here is 
something ' secret, sweet and precious,' not to be dealt 
with in the ordinary way of personal sonnets. This 
excelling argument calls for the most private treatment, 
and to carry out this a new leaf is turned over in the 
Book of Sonnets. If the result be in any way worthy 
the Earl is to take all credit, for it is he who has sug- 
gested the new theme, supplied the fresh argument, and 
struck out a new light of invention ; he has 'given Inven- 
tion light,' lighted the Poet on his novel path. Thus, ac- 
cepting the Earl's suggestion of writing dramatically on 
the subject given, the Poet calls upon him to be, to become 
the tenth Muse to him. Obviously he had not so con- 
sidered him whilst writing to the Earl ; but as he is about 
to write of him dramatically, he exclaims ' be thou the 
tenth Muse ! ' And if his new sonnets should please the 
Earl and his friends, who are curious in such matters, his 
be the pain, the labour ; the Earl's shall be the praise. 



THE NEW THEME. 157 

The reader will see how consistently the thought of 
this sonnet follows the series in which the Poet has ex- 
pressed his jealousy of the adulation of insincere rivals. He 
has now stepped into the inner circle of the Earl's private 
friendship, where they cannot pass. They may stand 
on the outside and address him, but the Earl has taken 
our poet into the inmost place of his private confidence, 
and whispered into his ear and breathed into his verse 
the argument of his love for Elizabeth Yernon, too ex- 
cellent for every common paper or ordinary method to 
rehearse. The other sonnets contain a lover's querulous- 
ness, this has the secret satisfaction of the chosen one 
who has been favoured above all others. 



SHAKSPEARE IS ABOUT TO WRITE SONNETS UPON THE EARL'S 
LOVE FOR ELIZABETH VERNON. 

How can my Muse want subject to invent, 
Whilst thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse 
Thine own sweet argument, too excellent 
For every vulgar paper to rehearse ? 
0, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me 
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight ; 
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, 
When thou thyself dost give invention light? 
Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth 
Than those old Nine which rhymers invocate, 
And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth 
Eternal numbers to outlive long date : 

If my slight Muse do please these curious days, 
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. 

(38.) 

It has been said that such amorous wooings as these 
of Shakspeare's sonnets, when personally interpreted, 
were common betwixt man and man with the Elizabethan 
sonneteers. But where is the record of them ? In whose 



158 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

sonnets shall we find the illustration ? Not in Spenser's, 
nor Sidney's, Drayton's, nor Daniel's, Constable's nor 
Driunmond's. Warton instanced the ' Affectionate Shep- 
herd ' ; but Barnefield, in his address ' To the curteous 
Gentlemen Eeaders ' prefixed to his ' Cynthia,' &c, ex- 
pressly forbids such an interpretation of his ' conceit,' 
and states that it was nothing else than ' an imitation 
of Yirgil in the 2nd Eclogue of Alexis.' There is no 
precedent whatever, only an assumption, a false excuse 
for a foolish theory. The precedent that we find is for 
such sonnets being written dramatically. It was by no 
means uncommon for a Poet to write in character on 
behalf of a Patron, and act as a sort of secretary in 
his love affairs, the letters being put into the shape of 
sonnets. In Shakspeare's plays we meet with various 
allusions to courting by means of ' Wailful sonnets whose 
composed rhymes should be full-fraught with service- 
able vows.' Thurio, in the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona, 7 
goes into the city to seek a gentleman who shall set 
a sonnet to music for the purpose of wooing Sylvia. 
Gascoigne, who died 1577, tells us, many years before 
Shakspeare wrote in this way for his young friend, he 
had been engaged to write for others in the same fashion. 
The author of the 'Porest of Fancy,' 1579, informs us 
that many of the poems were written for 'persons who 
had occasion to crave his help in that behalf.'' Mars- 
ton in his ' Satyres,' 1598, accuses Eoscio (Burbage), the 
tragedian, of having written verses for Mutio, and he tells 
us that ' absolute Castillo had furnished himself in like 
manner in order that he might pay court to his Mistress. 
And as he is glancing at the Globe Theatre, may not he 
have had Shakspeare and Southampton in his eye ? 
' Absolute Castilio ' is characteristic of the Earl, especially 
in the mouth of an envious poet whom he did not 
patronise. 

Drayton also tells us in his 21st sonnet that he knew 



OTHER SONNETS DRAMATICALLY WRITTEN. 159 

a gallant who wooed a young girl, but could not win her. 
He entreated the poet to try and move her with his per- 
suasive rhymes. And such was the force of Poesy, whether 
heaven-bred or not, that he won the Mistress for his 
friend with the very first sonnet he wrote ; that was suffi- 
cient to make her dote on the youth beyond measure. So 
that in showing Shakspeare to have written dramatic 
sonnets for the Earl of Southampton, to express his pas- 
sion for Mistress Vernon, we are not compelled to go far 
in search of a precedent for the doing of such a thing ; it 
was a common custom when he undertook to honour it 
by his observance. In the sonnet just quoted, Shakspeare 
accepts the Earl's suggestion that he should write dramatic 
sonnets upon subjects supplied by Southampton, who has 
thus ' given Invention light.' 



(60 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



DRAMATIC SONNETS. 

1593-4. 



>tt< 



SOUTHAMPTON IN LOVE WITH ELIZABETH VERNON. 



These four sonnets are among the most beautiful that 
Shakspeare wrote ; a greater depth of feeling is sounded : 
a new and most natural stop is drawn, which has the 
power to ' mitigate and swage with solemn touches 
troubled thoughts ' and make the measure dilate into its 
stateliest music ; the poetry grows graver and more sagely 
fine. Point by point, note by note, the most special par- 
ticulars are touched, and facts fresh from life and of the 
deepest significance are presented to us, yet we are unable 
to identify one of them as belonging to the life and cha- 
racter of Shakspeare. The music is full of meaning — the 
slower movement being necessary because of the burden 
it bears — but we do not know ivhat it means. If we sup- 
pose Shakspeare to be speaking, the more pointed the 
verity, the greater the vagueness. Simply we cannot tell 
what he is talking about in so sad a tone. It is possible 
that he may have lost dear friends, although, so far as we 
know, when these sonnets were written he had not even 
lost a child. Also, it is probable that, full of winning 
cheerfulness and sunny pleasantness, and ' smiling govern- 
ment ' of himself as he was, he had his night-seasons of 
sadness and depression ; that he experienced reverses of 
fortune at his theatre, and sat at home in the night- 



IT IS NOT SHAKSPEARE SPEAKING. 1(31 

time whilst his fellows were making merry after work, 
and nursed his hope and strength with cordial loving 
thoughts of his good friend. But we cannot picture 
Shakspeare turned malcontent and miserable ; looking 
upon himself as a lonely outcast, bewailing his wretched 
condition ; nursing his cankering thoughts prepensely, and 
rocking himself, as it were, over them persistently. This 
cannot be the man of proverbial sweetness and smoothness 
of disposition, the incarnation of all kindliness, the very 
spirit of profound and perennial cheerfulness who, in 
sonnet 32, calls his life a ' well-contented day ! ' If 
Shakspeare had at times felt depressed and despondent 
for want of sympathy, it was surely most unlike him to 
make such dolorous complaints to this dear friend whom 
he had just addressed as being more to him than all the 
world beside, and whose love had crowned him with a 
crown such as Fortune could not confer. In making the 
Poet his friend, he had honoured Shakspeare (his own 
words) beyond the power of the world's proudest titles ; 
enriched him with a gift of good that Fortune could not 
paragon. How then, into whatsoever 'disgrace' he had 
fallen, could he pour forth his selfish sorrow to this friend 
who was so supremely his source of joy ? How could he 
talk of being friendless and envying those who had friends 
when he was in possession of so peerless a friend ? How 
should he speak of ' troubling deaf Heaven with his boot- 
less cries,' when Heaven had heard him and sent him such 
a friend, and his was the nature to straightway apprehend 
the Giver in the gift ? How could he ' curse his fate,' 
which he held to be so blessed in having this friend? 
How should he speak of being ' contented least ' with what 
he enjoyed most when he had said this friend was the 
great spring of his joy? How should he exclaim against 
Fortune when he had received and warmly acknowledged 
the best gift she had to bestow ? Moreover, these cries 
of self would sooner or later have seemed bitterly selfish 

M 



162 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

for they would be addressed to a man who had a fair 
cause of complaint against Fortune, and a real right to 
utter every word that has been ascribed to Shakspeare 
himself in these exclamatory sonnets, with their wistful 
looks, and dolorous ejaculations, and tinge of lover's me- 
lancholy. We may rest assured that Shakspeare was the 
last man to have made any such mistake in Nature and in 
Art. If he had his sorrows he would have kept them out 
of sight whilst his friend was suffering ; he who has nearly 
kept himself out of sight altogether, and who comes the 
closest to us just for the sake of smiling up into the face 
of this friend, and of showing us that this was the man 
whom he once loved, as he told us, the only times he 
ever spoke in prose, and proclaimed that his love for him 
was without end. The personal reading is altogether 
wrong ; it does not touch these sonnets at any one point, 
much less fathom the depth of their full meaning. The 
character expressed is in heart and essence, as well as in 
every word, that of a youthful spirit who feels in ' disgrace 
with Fortune,' and the unnoticing eyes of men, and whose 
tune is ' Fortune, my Foe, why dost thou frown,' because 
for the present he is condemned to sit apart inactive. 

This talk about ' Fortune ' was to some extent a trick 
of the time, and a favourite strain with Essex. Perez, the 
flashing foreign friend of this Earl, also indulged much in 
it, calling himself ' Fortune's Monster,' which was the 
motto he inscribed on his portrait. It is the young man 
of Action doomed to be a mere spectator. He has seen 
his fellow-nobles, the ' choicest buds of all our English 
blood,' go by to battle with dancing pennons and nodding 
plumes (as Marston describes them), floating in feather on 
the land as ships float on the sea, or, as Shakspeare may 
have described them — 

' All furnished, all in arms, 
All plumed like estridges that wing the wind, 



THE EARL OUT OF LUCK. 163 

Bated like eagles having lately bathed ; 
Glittering in golden coats, like Images ; 
As full of spirit as the month of May, 
And gorgeous as the sun at Midsummer.' 

Some of them are off with Ealeigh, going to do good work 
for England, and strike at the Spaniard a ^memorable 
stroke. The land lias rung from end to end with the 
fame of Grrenville's great deed and glorious death. A few 
years before Cavendish had come sailing up the river 
Thames with his merry mariners clad in silk ; his sails of 
damask, and his top-masts cloth of gold ; thus symbolling 
outwardly the richness of the prize they had wrested from 
the enemy. The spirit of adventure is everywhere in 
motion, sending 

' Some to the wars, to try their fortune there ; 
Some to discover islands far away.' 

The hearts of the young burn within them at the recital 
of their fathers' deeds, the men who conquered Spain in 
1588, when all her proud embattled powers were broken. 
The after- swell of that high heaving of the national 
heart catches them up and sets them yearning to do some 
such work of noble note. 

He, too, is anxious for service, wearying to mount 
horse and away. The stir of the time is within him, 
and here he is compelled to sit still. He shares the 
feeling of his friend Charles Blount, afterwards Lord 
Mountj oy, who, twice or thrice, stole away from Court, 
without the Queen's leave, to join Sir John Norris in 
Bretagne, and was reproached by Her Majesty for trying 
to get knocked on the head as ' that inconsiderate fellow 
Sidney had done.' He hears the sounds of the strife, 
the trumpet's ' golden cry/ the clash and clangour of the 
conflict, and his spirit longs to be gone and in amidst the 
din and dust of the arena — he who is left by the wayside, 
out of harness and out of heart. He feels it as a disgrace 

M 2 



164 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

put on him by Fortune, and looks upon himself as a lonely 
outcast. He is inclined to curse his fate ; wishes he was 
of a more hopeful temperament, so that he could look on 
the bright side of things ; see the silver lining to his cloud. 
If he had only friends like this one at Court to get 
the ear of the Queen ; or if he had but the art of that 
one who seems to obtain all he asks for; or if he shared 
but the other's scope and free-play for his sword to 
clear a space for himself and win a prouder name for 
his beloved to wear. For he is deeply in love, which 
makes his spirit more than ever restless, and increases 
his sadness with its delicious pain. The thought of her 
is a spur to his eager spirit ; for her sake he would be 
earning name and fame, and here he is compelled to wait 
wearily, watch wistfully, wish vainly, and weep over this 
' dear waste ' of his best time. Yet he almost despises 
himself for having such thoughts, when he thinks of her 
whose love he has won. However poor his prospect, he 
has the love of her rich within his soul, and is really 
richer than the whole world's wealth could make him. 
She is a prize precious above all those that glitter in ima- 
gination, and, however out of luck, self-tormented, and 
inclined to read ' his own fortune in his misery ' of the 
moment, he sits in her heart ; that is his throne, and he 
would scorn to change condition with kings. 

It is the time, too, of the lover's life when sweet thoughts 
bring a feeling of sadness, and he is apt to water his wine 
of love a little with tears, and find it none the less sweet. 
The heart, being so tender to this new present of love, 
grows more tender in thinking of the past, and seems to 
feel its old sorrows truly for the first time. The trans- 
figuring touch of this fresh spring of love puts a new green 
on the old graves of the heart ; this precious gain of the 
lover's enriches also his sense of loss, and to the silent 
sessions of sweet thought it calls up the remembrance of 
things past, the old forms of the loved and the lost rise from 



A FILIAL AFFECTION. 165 

their grave of years in ' soft attire,' and lie can weep who 
is unaccustomed to shed tears. All his troubles come 
gathering on him together, and he grieves over ' griev- 
ances forgone • ' wails over the old long-since cancelled 
woes anew, and pays once more the sad account of 
by-gone sorrows. The speaker is one who has been 
bereaved of his dearest and most precious friends, friends 
in the closest kinship. Their loss is the sorrow of a 
life-time, the relationship the nearest to nature, and the 
deaths occurred years ago. They are friends whom the 
speaker has greatly lacked and needed in his life. His 
love for them is ' dear religious love,' the tenderness and 
tears are reverential, the affection is high and holy. We 
cannot attach these friends or this feeling to Shakspeare 
himself by any known facts of his life. And had there 
been any such facts in his experience, to sing of which 
would interest his patron, we also are concerned to know 
them. In Southampton's life alone can we identify the 
facts and find the counterpart to these sonnets. In that 
we have the fullest and most particular confirmation ; it 
matches the sonnets perfectly, point by point, through all 
the comparisons ; it accounts for the feeling, and sets the 
story sombrely aglow, as if written in illuminated letters 
on a ground of black ; gives it the real look of life and 
death. The Earl's father had died October 4th, 1581, 
when Henry Wriothesley was two days short of eight 
years old ; and about four years afterwards his elder 
brother died. Here are the precious friends whom he 
lacked so much ; here is the ' dear religious love ' that 
made him weep such ' holy ' and funereal tears ; here is 
the precise lapse of time. And in this new love of the 
Earl for Elizabeth Vernon, in the year 1593-4, he finds his 
solace. She comes to restore the old, to replace what he 
has lost, to reveal all that Death had hidden away in his 
endless night. She is the heaven of his departed ' loves ; ' 
in her they shine down on him starrily through a mist of 



166 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

tears. She gathers up in one endearing image of love 
his lost friends who have bequeathed to her all their 
share in his love, and she thus possesses the whole of him, 
and is the all-in-all of love to him. In her he takes his 
delight, just as a crippled father may rejoice to see his 
active child do youthful deeds, so he, being disabled or 
made lame by Fortune, sits apart and sees her in her pride 
of place wearing the rose of youth and shining grace of 
her beauty, and he finds all his comfort in her worth and 
truth. For however beautiful, virtuous, wealthy, or 
witty she may be, he has engrafted his love to her stock, 
and shares in her natural abundance of goodness, is a part 
in all her glory, so that he feels neither poor nor disabled 
nor despised. Whatever in the world is absolutely best 
he wishes for her, his wishes for himself are only relative. 
He has his wish, for she is and doth contain all that is 
supremely best ; and this makes him feel ten times hap- 
pier than if his own selfish wishes had been granted. 

In these sonnets we may perceive a touch of Shak- 
speare's art, which peeps out in his anxiety to see his friend 
married. How steadily he keeps in view of the Earl, this 
star of his love that tops the summit and gilds the darkest 
night ; this calm influence that is to clear his cloudy 
thoughts ; this balm of healing for his troubled heart ; 
this crown and comfort of his life. Also in these, the 
first sonnets spoken by the Earl, the poet gives us a sug- 
gestive hint of his friend's character, and reveals a pre- 
saging fear that fortune has a spite against him, of which 
we shall hear more yet, and which was amply illustrated 
in his after life. A proof that the love of Shakspeare for 
his friend was tender enough to be tremulous with a 
divining force. 

When in disgrace with Fortune, and men's eyes, 
I all alone beweep my outcast state 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries 
And look upon myself and curse my fate, 



THE EARL'S OLD LOSSES AND HIS NEW LOVE. 167 

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 

Featured like him, 1 like him with friends possessed, 

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 

With what I most enjoy contented least; 

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 

Haply I think on Thee, — and then my state 

Like to the Lark at break of day arising 

From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate, 

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

(29.) 

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 

I summon up remembrance of things past, 

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 

And with old woes new- wail my dear time's waste : 2 

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 

And weep afresh love's long-since cancelled woe, 3 

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight : 



1 Rosalind, in ' As You Like It/ when making fun of the fantastical 
sadness of the melancholy Jacques, tells him to he l out of love with his 
nativity/ and almost quarrel with God for ' making him of that counte- 
nance ; ' meaning his national face ! Mr. Masson, who is a believer in the 
autobiographic theory of the sonnets, finds here exactly the same form of 
' self-dissatisfaction ' as in the above sonnet. How, I do not comprehend, as 
it is Rosalind who says it to Jacques. Instead of its helping to prove that 
Shakspeare speaks personally in the above sonnet, and shows his own like- 
ness to the melancholy-sucking philosopher, it does just the contrary ; for 
it is most certain that, so far from sympathising with this pensive pretender, 
Shakspeare looks on him, through the eyes of the other characters, as an 
amusing sentimental coxcomb who conceits himself upon his sadness. Our 
poet had too deep a sense of the real sorrow of life to seriously countenance 
this affectation of melancholy — this playing at being sad. Jacques' melan- 
choly is ( right painted cloth j ' there is no heart in it ; the other characters 
know this ; but he has the trick of making assumption entertaining, and 
so they tolerate him. The blithe natures of the play, Rosalind, Orlando, 
Celia, and the banished Duke, these are the Poet's true comates in spirit. 

2 Shakspeare could not have wasted his precious time after he had once 
got to work in London. 

3 Southampton's father had been dead some twelve years ; his brother 
eight years. 



168 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Then can I grieve at grievances forgone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 

Which I new-pay as if not paid before : 

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 
All losses are restored, and sorrows end. 

(30.) 

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts, f. 
Which I, by lacking, have supposed dead ; 
And there reigns love, and all love's loving parts, 
And all those friends which I thought buried : 
How many a holy and obsequious tear 
Hath dear-religious love stolen from mine eye 
As interest of the dead, which now appear 
But things removed, that hidden in thee lie ! 
Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, 
Hung with the trophies 1 of my lovers gone, 
Who all their parts of me to thee did give, 
That due of many now is thine alone : 
Their images I loved I view in thee, 
And thou, all they, hast all the all of me. 

(31.) 

As a decrepit father takes delight 

To see his active child do deeds of youth, 

So I, made lame by Fortune's dearest spite, 

Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth: 

For whether beauty, birth, or wealth, or wit, 

Or any of these all, or all, or more 

Intitled in thy parts, do crowned sit, 

I make my love ingrafted to this store : 

So then I am not lame, poor, nor despised, 

Whilst that this shadow doth such substance give, 

That I in thy abundance am sufficed, 

And by a part of all thy glory live : 

Look, what is best, that best I wish in thee : 
This wish I have, then ten times happy me. 

(37.) 

1 f Hung with the trophies.' An allusion to the ancient custom of hang- 
ing wreaths upon monumental statues. Here the dead have bequeathed 
their crowns to adorn this present image of past love. 



169 



PERSONAL SONNETS. 

1594. 



SHAKSPEAEE TO THE EARL, WHEN HE HAS KNOWN 
HIM SOME THREE YEARS. 



These two sonnets will come in here appropriately enough, 
because there is a date in the one which is written when 
the Poet has known his friend three years, and because 
the fragment is on the same subject. As the second was 
unfinished, we may suppose it was never sent, but that it 
remained among the loose papers given by the Poet to 
Herbert, who put it in at the end of the Southampton 
sonnets, and thus divided them from the latter series. 
Time and subject determine its present place. 

• To me, fair friend, you never can be old, 
For as you were when first your eye I eyed, 
Such seems your beauty still : three winters' cold 
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride ; 
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turned 
In process of the seasons have I seen, 
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burned, 
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are green : 
Ah ! yet doth beauty, like a dial-hand, 
Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ; 
So your sweet hue, which methinks still doth stand, 
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceived ; 

For fear of which, hear this, thou age unbred ; 
Ere you were born was Beauty's summer dead. 

(104.) 



170 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

thou, my lovely Boy, who in thy power 
Dost hold Time's fickle glass, his sickle-hour ; 
Who hast by waning grown, and therein showest 
Thy lovers withering as thy sweet self growest ! 
If Nature, sov'reign mistress over wrack, 
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back, 
She keeps thee to this purpose, that her skill 
May Time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill : 
Yet fear her, thou minion of her pleasure ; 
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure : 
Her audit, tho' delayed, answered must be, 
And her quietus is to render thee ! 

(126.) 



171 



A PERSONAL SONNET. 



SHAKSPEARE PEOPOSES TO WRITE OF THE EARL 
IX HIS ABSENCE ABROAD. 



In this sonnet an absence is contemplated. Not an ab- 
sence of the Poet, but of the Earl. And the Poet pro- 
posed to take advantage of this separation to sing of his 
friend, and thus try to do his subject justice. To praise 
his friend whilst they are together is somewhat absurd, 
because they are so much one that it is like praising him- 
self. Even for this, for his modesty's sake, he says, let us 
be divided by distance, if by nothing else, so that he can, 
as it were, hold his friend, the better part of himself, at 
arm's length, to look on his virtues and praise his worth, 
and give that due to him which is the friend's alone. 
This sonnet establishes the fact that the Earl is about to 
go abroad or to leave home, and that Shakspeare intends 
to sing of him, to write about him, in his absence. He 
stops at home — ' here ' — to sing of him who ' doth hence 
remain.' It is a somewhat fantastic excuse for a parting, 
and very different to the real parting that has to come. 

SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL, WHO IS LEAVIXG EXGLAXD. 

0, how thy worth with manners may I sing^ 
When thou art all the better part of me ? 
What can mine own praise to mine own self bring ? 
And what is't but mine own when I praise thee ? 



172 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Even for this let us divided live, 
And our dear love lose name of single one, 
That by this separation I may give 
That due to thee, which thou deserv'st alone ! 
Oh, Absence, 1 what a torment would'st thou prove, 
"Were it not thy sour image gave sweet leave 
To entertain the time with thoughts of love, 
Which time and thoughts so sweetly doth deceive, 
And that thou teachest how to make one twain, 
By praising him here, who doth hence remain. 

(3,.) 

1 The Earl's absence ; Shakspeare would not speak thus of his own, and 
of its proving a torment to his friend ! This absence of the Earl also teaches 
the Poet how to write of his friend when he is away j gives him his cue for 
the following sonnets. 



173 



DRAMATIC SONNETS, 

1595. 



THE EAEL TO MISTEESS VERNON ON AND IN HIS 
ABSENCE ABROAD. 



It was in May 1595 that, according to Mr. Standen, the 
Earl of Southampton had got into disgrace at Court, and 
that Elizabeth Vernon and her ill good man waited upon 
her irate Majesty to know her resolution in the matter, 
and her Majesty sent out word to say firmly that she was 
sufficiently resolved. In September of the same year, White 
tells us that the Earl of Southampton has been courting 
the fair Mistress Vernon with too much familiarity ; the 
meaning of which is too plain for comment. The Queen's 
resolve was, without doubt, that Southampton should 
leave the Court in consequence. The following sonnets 
tell the story of his parting, his absence, and the cause of 
both. The cause is something he has done, for which he 
holds himself solely guilty. He admits that they must be 
twain, although they are one in love. The parting is im- 
posed on them by a separating spite. This parting will 
not change their feeling toward each other, though it will 
steal sweet hours from their delight by the compulsory 
absence. He may not call her his any more, lest the 
guilt which he bewails should shame her, nor must she 
notice him for others to see, else it will be to her own 



174 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

dishonour. He loves her so that her good report is his, 
and rather than endanger it further, he accepts the en- 
forced parting as necessary for her sake. In this way 
those blots that remain with him shall be borne by him 
alone, without her having to share the burden of his 
blame. The rest of these sonnets are so arranged as to 
tell the progress and incidents of the journey that followed 
the parting. Leaving his beloved, he journeys heavily on 
his way ; the horse bears him slowly, as if it were con- 
scious that his rider was in no haste, and it felt the weight 
of his woe. Thus thinking of his grief that lies before 
and his joy behind, he can excuse the slow pace of his 
steed. But, if he were returning to his beloved, what 
excuse could his horse then find ? 

( Then should I spur tho' mounted on the wind ; 
In winged speed no motion shall I know.' 

He would come back on wings of desire ; no horse could 
keep pace with him. His desire should neigh, that is, 
salute, no dull flesh— as his horse is in the habit of doing 
- — in his fiery race. Since he left her, his eyes are in his 
mind, and she so occupies his mind that the eyes lose 
their proper functions, and see everything in the likeness 
of that mental image. His mind being 'crowned with 
her ' is monarch of the eyes, and rules them at its pleasure. 
His most true mind thus makes the eyes see outward 
things untruly. Weary with the daily march, he hastens 
to bed at night ; but not to sleep. The mental journey 
now begins ; his mind travels back to her ' from far,' 
where he is staying : — 

* Lo, thus by day my limbs, by night my mind, 
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.' 

How can he then return in ' happy plight ' to renew his 
travel, who has no benefit of rest ? Night shows her to 
him in vision ; the day takes him farther and farther away 



A LOVER'S THOUGHTS BY THE WAY. 175 

from her. He tells them stories of his love and of her 
beauty, to wile away the time. It is all in vain. For 
the day still draws out the distance longer and longer, and 
the night doth nightly make stronger that length of grief 
spun out by day. Sonnet 7 borders in idea upon sonnets 
3 and 4 of the group. He sees best when he shuts his 
eyes. Her image in his mind shines with such splendour 
that it makes the night luminous and the day dark. Is it 
her will, he asks, to keep his eyes open, his mind awake, 
to mock him with shadows of herself ? Or does she send 
her spirit so far from home to pry into his deeds : — - 

' To find out shames and idle hours in me, 
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy ? ' 

Oh, no ! he says, it is not her love nor her jealousy, but 
his own, that keep him awake and on the fret : — * 

6 For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, 
From me far off, with others all too near.'' 

This brings the very natural thought of his care, on leaving 
home, in securing his -jewels and locking up his trifles ; 
and he has left this precious jewel of his love exposed as 
the unprotected prey of every common thief. Her he 
could not lock up, except in his heart. If he could be all 
spirit now, and move swift as thought, then the great and 
perilous distance that lies between them should not stop 
him. In spite of space, he would come from the distant 
shores, ' limits far remote,' to the place where his beloved 
stays ! But, as he cannot come himself, he sends his 
thought and his yearnings in tender embassy of love to 
her, and these swift messengers, on returning, tell him of 
her c fair health.' These go to and fro continually. Then 
he tries to give an ingenious turn to the enforced absence. 
He makes it look as though he had a choice in the matter, 
and the separation was only to put a finer point upon the 
pleasure of meeting. He is rich in a locked-up possession, 
of which he keeps the key ; but he will not look in upon 



17G SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

his treasure too often, lest it should dull his sense of the 
preciousness, make the privilege too common. The ' time 
that keeps ' the beloved is his ' chest,' or jewel-casket ; or 
rather it is the wardrobe that hides the robe which is to 
make blest some special moment by a fresh unfolding of 
the shut-up richness : — 

' Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, 
Being had — to Triumph ; being lacked — to Hope ! ' 

The reader cannot fail to feel how these sonnets dilate 
with life when spoken by a lover to his absent mistress. 
Thus interpreted, they are unfathomably beautiful ; the 
beauty reaching its best in sonnets 48 and 52. How much- 
nearer to nature they nestle when we know the yearnings 
are womanward ! This gives to them the true bitter- 
sweet. How tender and true and naively winsome is the 
expression ! How deep-hearted the love ! The dramatic 
mood shows the Poet to us likest himself; the poetry 
kindles with a new dawn, and breathes the aroma of 
Shakspeare's sweetest love-lines ; it takes us into a presence 
akin to that of Perdita and Viola, Helena and Imogen, and 
the rest of those fragrant-natured women whom he c loved 
into being ; ' this veiled presence which has so perplexed 
us when told that all these tender perfections of poetry, 
caresses of feeling, and daintinesses of expression were 
lavished on a man, and the natural instinct fought against 
the seeming fact, is the presence of Elizabeth Vernon. It 
is she who has been so long buried alive in the sonnets ; 
smothered up in their sweets. 'See how she 'gins to 
blow into Life's flower again ; ' as we let in a breath of 
fresh air ! 

THE LOVERS' PARTING. 

Let me confess that we two must be twain, 1 
Altho' our undivided loves are one : 

1 So Pandarus to Helen, speaking of Cressid and Paris ; says, 'She'll none 
of him ; they two are twain.' 1 



SOUTHAMPTON LEAVES ENGLAND. 177 

So shall those blots that do with me remain 

Without thy help by me be borne alone : 

In our two loves there is but one respect, 

Tho' in our lives a separable spite. 

Which tho' it alter not love's sole effect, 

Yet doth it steal sweet hours from love's delight : 

I may not evermore acknowledge thee, 1 

Lest my bewailed guilt should do thee shame, 

Nor thou with public kindness honour me, 

Unless thou take that honour from thy name : 
But do not so, I love thee in such sort, 
As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report. 

(36.) 
THE EARL'S JOURNEY. 

How heavy do I journey on the way, 

When what I seek — my weary travel's end — 

Doth teach that ease and that repose to say 

e Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend ! ' l 

The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, 

Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me, 

As if by some instinct the wretch did know 

His rider loved not speed being made from thee : 

The bloody spur cannot provoke him on 

That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide 

Which heavily he answers with a groan 

More sharp to me than spurring to his side : 

For that same groan doth put this in my mind ; 

My grief lies onward, and my joy behind. 2 

(50.) 
1 So Bolingbroke, when going into banishment, says — 
1 Every tedious stride I make 
Will but remember me what a deal of world 
I wander from the jewels that I love.' — -Richard II, act i. sc. 3. 
1 My grief lies onward and my joy behind.' 
Had Shakspeare been on his way to visit his wife and family at Stratford, 
which has been supposed, he must have been in a most dolorous condition. 
His return home was not a pleasant prospect, (and why, then, should he 
have gone ?) if be felt thus that he was going to grief ! But it is difficult 
to imagine that Southampton would care for such an equivocal compliment 
at the expense of Shakspeare's wife and little ones, to say nothing of the 
Poet's want of manliness which a personal reading would imply. 

N 



178 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Thus can my love excuse the slow offence 
Of my dull bearer, when from thee I speed ; 
From where thou art why should I haste me thence? 
Till I return, of posting is no need : 
0, what excuse will my poor beast then find, 
When swift extremity can seem but slow? 
Then should I spur tho' mounted on the wind ; 
In winged speed no motion shall I know : 
Then can no horse with my desire keep pace ; 
Therefore Desire, of perfect'st love being made, 
Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race, 1 
But love, for love, shall thus excuse my jade — 
Since from thee going he went wilful slow, 
Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go. 

(51.) 

Since I left you mine eye is in my mind, 

And that which governs me to go about 

Doth part his function, and is partly blind. 

Seems seeing, but effectually is out ; 

For it no form delivers to the heart,. 

Of bird, of flower, or shape which it doth latch ; 

1 ' Shall neigh no dull flesh in his fiery race.' 

Malone thought the expression of this line so uncouth that he laboured to 
alter it. He printed the line thus — 

' Shall neigh (no dull flesh) in his fiery race • ' 

in which shape it has generally been printed since. He still suspected the 
line to be corrupt, and thought perhaps it should read — 
' Shall neigh to dull flesh in his fiery race j ' 

meaning that ' Desire, in the ardour of impatience, should call to the slug- 
gish animal (the horse) to proceed with swifter motion.' Steevens opines 
* the sense may be this — therefore desire, being no dull piece of ho?seflesh, 
but composed of the most perfect love, shall neigh as he proceeds in his hot 
career.' Yet the Quarto was perfectly right, and the meaning quite plain. 
The image is used by one who rides a horse among horses, and horses are in 
the habit of neighing when they salute each other ; they will do this, too, 
if speed be ever so important. And the writer says, his desire being made 
of perfectest love, having nothing animal about it, shall not salute any dull 
flesh in his fiery race ; only he continues the use of the image by means of 
the word ' neigh.'' Perhaps the Poet was thinking of the words of the 
prophet Jeremiah — ' They were as fed horses in the morning : every one 
neighed after his neighbour's wife.' 



TRANSFORMATION. 1 79 

Of' bis quick objects hath the mind no part, 
Nor his own vision holds what it doth catch ; 
For if it see the rud'st or gentlest sight, 
The most sweet favour or deformed'st creature, 
The mountain or the sea, the day or night, 
The crow or dove, it shapes them to your feature : 
Incapable of more, replete with you, 
My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue. 1 

(us.) 

Or whether doth my mind, being crown'd with you, 

Drink up the Monarch's plague, this flattery ? 

Or whether shall I say mine eye saith true, 

And that your love taught it this alchemy, 

To make of monsters and things indigest 

Such cherubins as your sweet self resemble, 

Creating every bad a perfect best, 

As fast as objects to his beams assemble? 

Oh, 'tis the first ; 'tis flattery in my seeing, 

And my great mind most kingly drinks it up ; 

Mine eye well knows what with his gust is 'greeing, 

And to his palate doth prepare the cup : 
If it be poisoned, 'tis the lesser sin 
That mine eye loves it and doth first begin. 2 



(114.) 



Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed, 
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired ; 
But then begins a journey in my head 
To work my mind when body's work's expired : 
For then my thoughts (from far, where I abide) 
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee, 
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide, 
Looking on darkness which the blind do see ; 



1 The Quarto reads— 

' My most true mind thus maketh mine untrue.'' 

But an opposition is intended betwixt the mental and the visual sight ; 
' mind ' and l eye ' are repeated thrice in this sense in the next sonnet. 

2 It is possible that this and the preceding sonnet refer to a later journey, 
but they will find a fit place with the other sonnets spoken by the Earl in 
his absence. 

m 2 



180 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Save that my soul's imaginary sight 

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view, 

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night, 

Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new : l 
Lo, thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind 
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find. 

(27.) 

How can I then return in happy plight, 

That am debarred the benefit of rest ? 

When Day's oppression is not eased by Night, 

But Day by Night and Night by Day oppressed ; 

And each, tho' enemies to either's reign, 

Do in consent shake hands to torture me, 

The one by toil, the other to complain 

How far I toil ; still farther off from thee : 

I tell the Day, to please him, thou art bright, 

And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven : 

So flatter I the swart-complexioned Night, 

When sparkling stars tire 2 not, thou gild'st the Even : 3 
But Day doth daily draw my sorrows longer, 
And Night doth nightly make grief's length seem 
stronger. (28.) 

' It seems she hangs upon the cheek of Night 
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.' 

This is spoken of a woman- by her lover in e Romeo and Juliet.' 

2 ' When sparkling stars tire not.' 

The Quarto reads, 'When sparkling stars twire not,' and the -word 'twire' 
has much puzzled the commentators. Steevens thinks ' twire ' may have 
the same signification as quire, or it is a corruption. He guesses that 
'twink ' may he meant, for twinkle. Malone suggests that we should read 
' when sparkling stars " twirl " not.' The word ' twire ' means motion of a 
peculiar kind. In Chaucer it is applied to the intermitted soimds of a bird. 
Twyreth (says Skinner), is interpreted singeth. Drayton has the word. 
He says ' the sun with fervent eye looks thro' the twyring glades ; ' by which 
I take it he means the blades of grass thrilling in the wind. A very charac- 
teristic motion of short glade-grass ! In Beaumont and Fletcher we find, 
' I saw the wench that twired and twinkled at thee.' Ben Jonson has it, 
' Which maids will twire at 'tween their fingers thus ! ' Hence Gilford's 
explanation of the word is 'to leer aiFectedly.' Fancy a star leering 
affectedly! In Marston's 'Antonio and Mellida' (act iv. first part), one of 
the characters is in search of another who is hiding, and he says, ' I saw a 
thing stir under a hedge, and I peeped and I spied a thing, and I peered, 
and I tweered underneath.' By which we see that it is not used either for 



LOVE-DREAMS. 181 

When most I wink then do mine eyes best see. 
For all the day they view things unrespected : 
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee, 
And, darkly bright, are bright in dark directed ! 
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright, 
How would thy shadow's form form happy show 
To the clear day with thy much clearer light, 
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so ? 
How would — I say — mine eyes be blessed made 
By looking on thee in the living day, 
When in dead night thy fair, imperfect shade 
Thro' heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay ? 
All days are nights to see till I see thee : 
And nights bright days when dreams do shew thee me. 

(43.) 

Is it thy will thine image should keep open 
My heavy eyelids to the weary night ? 
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, 
Whilst shadows like to thee do mock my sight ? 

peeping or peering, but for the motion made in doing both. Again, Beau- 
mont and Fletcher apply it to the braying of an ass : — ' Ye are an ass, a 
foare-pipe ! ' So that, whether of sound or bodily motion, it signifies an 
intermittent movement. No word could more admirably express the motion 
of a snipe, but it is nowhere used to describe the twinkling of a star : such an 
application is the result of our feeling back for the meaning of the word 
' twire,' through our sense of the word twitter. To twire, so to say, 
describes a larger zig-zag of motion than to twitter, and is undoubtedly the 
a. s. 'thwyrian,' to wrest, to twist, to put out of a straight course, to 
swerve from a straight line. Therefore I conclude that Shakspeare did not 
write when ' sparkling stars tioire not,' which, so far as 'twire ' means mo- 
tion, would be saying 'when sparkling stars do not sparkle.' The word he 
used would be sure to add to the line in another sense. And he does not 
need a word to express movement at all, but a still splendour. ' Thou 
gild'st the even ! ' So I doubt not that he wrote ' when sparkling stars tire 
not ;' i.e. when they adorn not. The fore-man and fore-room made the phrase 
familiar, and the act of tiring or dressing for the night gave to it a natural 
touch. He uses the same word in the same sense in ' Venus and Adonis/ 
stanza 30 — ' And Titan tired in the mid-day heat.' 
3 ' Thou gild'st the Even, 

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, 
Having some business, do entreat her eyes 
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.' 
This is spoken of a woman by a lover in the ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 



182 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee 

So far from home into my deeds to pry, 

To find out shames and idle hours in me, 

The scope and tenor of thy jealousy? 

Oh, no, thy love, tho' much, is not so great, 

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake : 

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat, 

To play the watchman ever for thy sake : 

For thee watch I whilst thou dost watch elsewhere, 
From me far off, with others all too near ! 

(61.) 

How careful was I, when I took my way, 
Each trifle under truest bars to thrust, 
That to my use it might unused stay 
From hands of falsehood, in sure wards of trust : 
But thou, to whom my jewels 1 trifles are, 
Most worthy comfort, now my greatest grief, 
Thou best of dearest, and mine only care, 
Art left the prey of every vulgar thief! 
Thee have I not locked up in any chest, 
Save where thou art not, tho' I feel thou art, 
Within the gentle closure of my breast, 
From whence at pleasure thou may'st come and part ; 
And even thence thou wilt be stolen, I fear, 
For truth proves thievish for a prize so dear. 

(48.) 

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought, 
Injurious distance should not stop my wa}^, 
For then, despite of space, I would be brought 
From limits far remote, where thou dost stay, 2 
No matter then altho' my foot did stand 
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee, 

1 ' My jewels.' So Bertram, in ' All's Well that Ends Well/ when 
preparing for a journey, says — 

' I have writ rny letters, casketed my treasure. ,' 

It may he assumed that Shakspeare's own jewels at the period of writing 
were hardly worth mentioning to a nobleman. 

2 i. e. I would he brought from * limits far remote ' where I am, on 
distant shores, to where thou dost stay, at home. 



MIND AND MATTER. 183 

For nimble thought can jump both sea and land, 
As soon as think the place where he would be : 
But, ah ! thought kills me that I am not thought, 
To leap large length of miles l when thou art gone, 2 
But that so much of earth and water wrought 
I must attend Time's leisure with my moan ; 
Eeceiving nought by elements so slow 
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe. 

(44.) 

The other two, slight Air and purging Fire, 
Are both with thee, wherever I abide ; 
The first my thought, the other my desire, 
These present, absent with swift motion slide : 3 
For when these quicker elements are gone 
In tender embassy of love to thee, 
My life being made of four, with two alone 
Sinks down to death oppressed with melancholy, 
Until life's composition be recured 
By those swift messengers returned from thee, 4 
Who even but now come back again, assured 
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me ! 

This told I joy, but then no longer glad, 

I send them back again, and straight grow sad. 

(45.) 

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key 

Can bring him to his sweet, uplocked treasure, " 

1 i To leap large lengths of miles.' 

So in ' King John ' — 

1 Large lengths of seas and shores 
Between my father and my mother lay.' 

2 * When thou art gone,' When her image, seen in vision, has vanished. 

3 This line is usually and absurdly printed — 

' These present-absent with swift motion slide.' 
Shakspeare never devised such a condition as ' present-absent' '; what he 
says is, ' These, when present, become instantly absent.' 

4 The twin-likeness of these lines may be found in Valentine's letter to 
Sylvia (' Two Gentlemen of Verona '), beginning — 

1 My thoughts do harbour with my Silvia nightly ' ; 

which similar strain is, of course, addressed from man to woman ! 



184 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

The which he will not every hour survey, 
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure : 
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare, 
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set 
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are, 
Or captain jewels in the carcanet : 
So is the time that keeps you as my chest, 
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, 
To make some special instant special blest, 
By new unfolding his imprisoned pride : 

Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, 
Being had — to triumph ; being lacked — to hope ! 

(52.) 

We have no grounds for supposing that Shakspeare ever 
undertook a 'journey ' like this ; no conclusive reason to 
believe that lie was ever out of England. Here is a man 
on his travels, performing a long and wearying journey 
day by day on horseback. Day after day lie toils on 
farther and farther away from the person addressed. In 
sonnet 27, he is so far distant as to speak of his thoughts 
making a pilgrimage home again. In sonnet 44 he is at 
limits far remote, which must mean distant shores ; also 
the sonnet suggests that both sea and land lie between the 
two persons who are this perilous distance apart. It was 
a journey, too, for which considerable preparation had to 
be made ; long time of absence was contemplated, and 
the speaker's property placed in ' sure wards of trust.' 
There is a hint of banishment, of an enforced absence in : — 

f I must attend Time's leisure with my moan.' 

This cannot be Shakspeare on his way to Stratford. And 
if it were possible for it to be him on his travels abroad, 
then the person addressed, the stay-at-home, could not be 
Southampton. 



185 



PERSONAL SONNETS. 

1595. 

SHAKSPEARE OF THE EARL IN HIS ABSENCE, 



These three sonnets are spoken by Shakspeare to the 
Earl, during his absence from England. At first sight 
they may appear to belong to those spoken by the Earl to 
his mistress. They have the look of a lover fondling the 
miniature of his beloved, and rejoicing that in her absence 
he has at least her portrait to dote on and dally with. 
But lines 10 and 11 of the third sonnet, show that it is 
the person addressed who is away, and on the move ; not 
the speaker. He says his thoughts will follow his friend, 
no matter how far. Also, with a closer look we may see 
that the picture is not a real portrait. The poet says his 
eye has played the painter and engraved the image in his 
heart. The picture that can be seen in sleep must be 
mental. It is this visionary portrait of the Earl for the 
possession of which the eyes and heart contend. A picture 
that hangs in his ' bosom's shop,' not at the print-seller's. 
It is the banquet that is painted, not the picture. All is air- 
drawn and impalpable, or it would lack sufficient scope for 
the play of fancy, the contention of heart and eye which 
ends in such a loving league of amity. The three sonnets 
are obviously suggested by the 2 3rd of Drayton's Sonnets. 1 

' Whilst yet mine eyes do surfeit with delight, 
My woful heart imprisoned in my breast 
Wisheth to "be transformed to my sight, 
That it, like those, by looking, might be blest ; 



186 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath stell'd 1 
Thy beauty's form in table of my heart ; 
My body is the frame wherein 'tis held, 
And perspective it is best painter's art : 
For thro' the painter must you see his skill, 
To find where your true image pictured lies, 
Which in my bosom's shop is hanging still, 
That hath his windows glazed with thine eyes : 
Now see what good turns eyes for eyes have done ! 
Mine eyes have drawn thy shape, and thine for me 
Are windows to my breast, wherethro' the sun 
Delights to peep, to gaze therein on thee ; 

Yet eyes this cunning want to grace their art — 
They draw but what they see, know not the heart. 

(24.) 

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war, 
How to decide the conquest of thy sight ; 
Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar, 
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right 
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie, 
(A closet never pierced with crystal e}^es) 
But the defendant doth that plea deny, 
And says, in him thy fair appearance lies ; 
To 'cide this title is impanelled 
A 'quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart, 
And by their verdict is determined 
The clear eye's moiety, and the dear heart's part : 
As thus, — mine eye's due is thine outward part : 
And my heart's right thine inward love of heart. 

(46.) 

But, whilst mine eyes thus greedily do gaze ; 

Finding their objects evermore depart, 

These now the other's happiness do praise, 

Wishing themselves that they had been my heart : 

That eyes were heart, or that the heart were eyes, 

As covetous the others' use to have ; 

But, finding Nature their request denies, 

This to each other mutually they crave, 
That since the one cannot the other be, 
That eyes could think of that my heart could see.' 

1 ' Stelled.' Probably fixed. In e King Lear ' the stars are called the 
'stelled fires.' 



THE PORTRAIT SEEN IN VISION. 187 

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took, 
And each doth good turns now unto the other ; 
When that mine eye is famished for a look, 
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother, 
With my love's picture then mine eye doth feast, 
And to the painted banquet bids my heart : 
Another time mine eye is my heart's guest, 
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part ; 
So, either by thy picture or my love, 
Thyself away art present still with me, 
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move, 
And I am still with them, and they with thee : 
Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight 
Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight. 

(47.) 



188 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 



THE 



DARK STORY OF THE SONNETS, 



One of the decisive battles of the sonnets has to be 
fought around the next group which I have entitled, 
' Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy of the Earl and her friend 
Lady Rich.' It is here the personal theorists feel them- 
selves most safely entrenched, and altogether unassailable. 
It is here they so triumphantly lift the vulturine nose and 
snuff the carrion that infects the air. They have no mis- 
givings that the scent may be carried in their own nostrils. 
And when one ventures to doubt whether the vulturine 
nose be the best of all possible guides in a matter which 
demands the most delicate discrimination, the nicest 
intuition, the vulturine nose is forthwith elevated in 
disgust and scorn. Why, the facts are as plain, to them, 
as the nose in their face. If there be one fact patent in 
the sonnets, it is that Shakspeare was a scamp and a 
blackguard, and that he told all the world so, only the 
world has been too bigoted to believe him. If you hint 
that there may be another reading possible ; one that is 
compatible with the poet's purity, they think you very 
good to say so; very good indeed, excessively amiable; 
but you are too youthful, too simple, and unripe. ' Such 
a view is perfectly untenable to us who know the sonnets.' 
By knowing the sonnets, they mean accepting all the 
squinting constructions which show the moral obliquity 
of Shakspeare. The devil's own smile of paternal 



SURMISES OF THE PERSONAL THEORISTS. 189 

pity could not exceed their look of kindly commiseration, 
and superb patronage with which they treat your want 
of worldly wisdom. ' Ah, you do not allow for human 
nature's frailties. Prove or assume what you please 
of the other sonnets ; of one thing we are certain, and 
whosoever does not see that Shakspeare, invisible as he 
was on all other sides, has here given us a full view of his 
baser part, knows nothing whatever about the subject' 
And so Shakspeare is to be made appear to the world as 
an unconscionable debauchee in his life, a hypocrite in his 
protestations of affection, and a stark fool in his confessions, 
in order that these keen-eyed and keener-scented critics 
may look wondrous wise. But, was our poet such a fool ? 
Are these critics so wise ? They have no doubts on either 
point ; I have more than misgivings f on both. But to the 
story. 

It has been assumed, and unhesitatingly put forth, that 
Shakspeare, having a wife at Stratford, kept a mistress in 
London. The chief advocate of this theory gives a 
finishing smack of satisfaction to his reading by remarking 
thus : — ' May no person be inclined on this account to 
condemn him with a bitterness equal to their own virtue. 
For myself, I confess I have not the heart to blame him 
at all — purely because he so keenly reproaches himself for 
his own sin and folly.' This lady held the Poet captive 
with all the fierce tyranny of Circe of old. It has even 
been conjectured that she was an Italian, possibly the 
wife of some merchant-prince of Venice, if not the wife 
of the Venetian Ambassador. It is further supposed that 
the Poet obtained his release from her influence when his 
young friend Southampton or 4 Mr. W. H.' became her 
prey, and then the lady passed away into the realm of the 
Poet's imagination, to become the ideal of his bolder 
black-eyed beauties. For there is no doubt that the lady 
was black-eyed and had black hair, with a most swarthy 
complexion. The Poet, however, did not give her up to 



190 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

his friend without a fierce struggle for her, during which 
he flung about him such wildfire words as scarred the 
guilty couple and his own fair fame for ever. Now, if 
there were any sure grounds for such a story, I should 
feel bound to face it. We ought not to lie about Shak- 
speare because we love him. We should have no right to 
alter any known fact of his life. And so anxious are we 
to lay hold on him to look into his mortal face, that we 
could almost gladly clutch any part of his human skirts, 
even if the hem had trailed somewhat in the mire. It 
might have been pleasant too could we have proved that 
he had such failings and errors as afforded a satisfactory 
set-off to his splendour— the foil which should render his 
glory less dazzling to weak eyes. There are tastes that 
would have appreciated his fame all the more for a taint 
in it ! Besides we all know what mad things Love has 
done in this world ; that while he can see so clearly on 
behalf of others, he is so often blind for self. We know 
how this passion has coloured some lump of common earth 
like the human clay fresh from Eden, bright with God's 
latest touch ; how it has clothed spiritual deformity with 
splendour and grace ; how it has discrowned the kingly 
men and made fools of the wise ones ; covered a David 
with shame ; snatched the empire of a world from 
Anthony ; made great heroes lay down their heads and 
leave their laurels in a wanton's lap ; set the wits of. many 
a poor poet dancing like those of a lunatic. Shakspeare 
with his ripe physical nature, fine animal spirits, and mag- 
nificent pulse of rich life, might have been one victim 
more. He might have been ! But, was he ? And has 
he written sonnets to record the mutual shame of himself 
and that friend whom he professed to love with a love 
' passing the love of woman,' and strove to image forth 
for endless honour ? 

There is pretty good proof that these sonnets and their 
story were not personal to Shakspeare ; that they do not 



CHARACTER OF OUR POET. 191 

relate to anything deeply and desperately guilty, or we 
should hardly find one of them in print so early as 1599. 
There could be no great reason why it should not have 
gone out of our prudent Poet's hands, or he would not 
have let it go. That we do find it in print shows it was 
written for a purpose, having to do with the ' sonnets 
among his private friends,' and that the secret was of no 
great moment even to them, or they would have kept it 
better. And once the sonnet was in print, if it had told 
anything, as in a glass darkly, against the fair fame of 
Shakspeare — if there had been such a story as modern 
ingenuity has discovered, we may be sure there were eyes 
sharp enough amongst the Poet's contemporaries to have 
spied it out, and made the most of it. His friendship 
with Southampton was known. His sonnets were read 
with interest. Yet there is not a whisper against him.- 
And why but because it was understood that they were 
sonnets, not personal confessions, but sonnets on subjects 
chosen or given? It was not strange in 1599 that a 
great dramatic poet should write dramatically in his 
sonnets. And there was nothing suspicious in the Poet's 
life or personal bearing to cause the lynx-eyed to pry, 
no summons issued for a feast of the vultures ; neither 
when this sonnet or the book of sonnets was printed, nor 
when the writer himself was dead and his grave had be- 
come the fair mark for a foul bird. No one rakes there 
for rottenness ; no one ventures to deposit dirt there. No 
doubt the Elizabethans had as keen a scent for a scandal 
as the Victorians may have, and liked their game to be 
as high ; such things as our Poet has been supposed to 
charge himself with could not have escaped, unnoticed 
and unknown. In this world it is easy enough at any 
period of history, and in any station of life, for some of 
the personal virtues to be overlooked by whole ' troops of 
unrecording friends.' These may nestle and make sweet 
some small breathing-space of life, and pass away without 



192 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

being remembered in gilt letters. But the Vices ! That 
is quite a different matter. And such vices too in such a 
man as Shakspeare, who was watched by so many jealous 
looks on the part of those who used the pen and could 
prick sharply with it. His vices could not have nestled 
out of sight quite so cleverly if he himself had taken 
pains to endorse them publicly. But there is not an 
ill-breath breathed against the -moral reputation of our 
Poet, either from rival dramatist or chronicler of scandal, 
in all the letters of the time. Now character is evidence 
in any properly constituted court of justice. Not as 
against facts, but as an element in the right interpretation 
of them. Here, however, there are no facts to array 
against the character, only inferences, whereas the cha- 
racter stands irremoveably fixed, with all the facts for 
buttresses around it. 

But for the sake of argument, let us suppose the sonnets 
to tell such a story : that the story was founded on a 
reality in our Poet's life, and that his young friend did 
really rob him of his Mistress. How are we to reconcile 
the fact of Shakspeare having written sonnets on purpose 
to proclaim the grievous errors of himself and his friend, 
and given an eternal tarnish to that fair affection of theirs, 
with the feeling that runs through all the personal son- 
nets, the desire to paint this friend in the loveliest colours, 
and set up an image of him that should win the world's 
love and admiration for all time ? 

Shakspeare's great object in composing the Southamp- 
ton Sonnets, was to do honour to the Earl, to show him 
gratitude, respect, love, and to embalm his beauty, moral 
and physical, for posterity. Not to drag him in the dirt 
and hold him up to infamy — himself to execration. In 
every personal glimpse we get, we see a man who feels a 
most fatherly affection for his young friend. He counsels 
like a father. He respects the marriage ties, and is 
anxious to see his ' dear boy ' throned in the purest seat 



THE rOETS OBJECT IN WRITING. 193 

of honour, the sanctity of a Home that is blessed with a 
wife and children. His spirit hovers about his ' dear 
boy ' as on wings of love, in the most protecting way ; he 
warns, he comforts, he cheers him. He begs that he will 
be as wary for himself as he will be for him. The supreme 
object of his writing is to win honour for the Ear]. He 
fondly hopes by-ancl-by to publicly show himself worthy 
of the Earl's sweet respect. In his dedication to the first 
poem he promises to honour him with some graver 
labour. His verse is to exalt him in life, and in death it 
shall be his ' gentle monument,' the ' living record ' of his 
memory. It is meant to distill the sweetness of the 
friend's life, worth, truth, and beauty ; not to surround him 
with an ill odour. 

' To no other pass my verses tend 
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.' 9 

In these his monument shall * shine more bright than 
unswept stone,' and ' gainst death and all-oblivious enmity 
shall you pace forth, your praise shall still find room,' as 
the noble of nature's own crowning ; the man whom 
Shakspeare delighted to love and respect. These sonnets 
are to stand to future times for the primal purpose of 
showing the Earl's worth. And if his dear friend ever 
looks at them after the Poet is gone, he is to find there 
the very part, the ' better part,' of Shakspeare that was 
consecrated to him. The object, I repeat, is to set the 
Earl forth unparagoned, to consecrate not to desecrate 
their affection, and the spirit of the writer is one of the 
utmost purity and loving regard. To him the Earl is the 
subject of kind thoughts, pure thoughts, high thoughts, a 
hundred times proclaimed. And in sonnet 71 he says, 
' I love you so that when I am gone I would have you 
forget me altogether, rather than my death should cause 
you a pang of sorrow.' Not anything he had done or 
said in his life ! 



194 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

And, in the last of the personal sonnets addressed to 
Southampton on his release from prison, there is no change 
in his regards, except that the affection has increased and 
ripened with time. Moreover, we see, right through the 
sonnets, from the first to this latter one, that Shakspeare - 
has most absolutely kept the loftiest moral altitude. He 
has preserved his own purity and integrity of soul to have 
the right of speaking to the Earl as he does at times. For 
example, in sonnet 70, where he defends the youth against 
some slander, and bears testimony that his life presents a 
' pure unstained prime.' He has kept sacred his right of 
affection to express his sadness when the Earl does associate 
with evil companions, and allow ' sin to lace itself with his 
society ,' and he bewails most touchingly that his fame should 
grow common, that evil tongues should be permitted to 
wag at his name. Now, these sonnets which we speak of 
are personal ; we know and can prove them to be so, 
because he who speaks in them can be identified as the 
man who writes them. On this personal stand-point we 
may take our ground, and we shall find that through all 
the personal sonnets the character is one and self-con- 
sistent, and the likest possible to that of the Shakspeare 
whom we know by all other report of his contemporaries, 
and through his works. Here we are able to identify the 
Man Shakspeare by his own voice, and we can prove that 
in these sonnets, which are personal, there is no hint, not 
one word of suggestion that Shakspeare was, or could be, 
guilty of any such sins as have been laid to his charge. 
Not one self-reproach for being in any way the cause of 
his friend's errors, or loss of reputation. He speaks of 
his own death, but there is no regret for aught that he 
has done in companionship with the Earl. When he is 
dead he asks the Earl to forget him, and wdiy ? Because 
he is shamed by his writings, not by his life. If, he pleads, 
the Earl should desert him for the rival poet, and he is 
cast aw T ay, the worst is this, ' My love was my decay ' — 



INCONGRUITIES OF THE DARK STORY. 195 

his love for the Earl, not for a bad woman. And it is 
useless for any one to reply that the disreputable affair 
may have occurred after some of the sonnets were written, 
for this pure and lofty tone is the dominant one up to the 
sonnet of 1603. Whereas, if there had been any such 
grievous error shared in common by poet and peer, it 
must have been in the earliest stage of their acquaintance- 
ship, when, as the Poet would be made to say, his friend 
had only been his for one hour. In fact, the Poet must 
have been keeping a mistress at the very time he was 
writing those beautiful sonnets in praise of marriage. 
Yet we find there is not one word of contrition or self- 
reproach ; no single reference to his own breach of the 
moral law, or marriage tie, in all the sage and solemn 
personal sonnets which show us Shakspeare's own soul. 
How could our Poet, who had so warmly advocated ' hus- 
bandry in honour ' for the Earl, have written sonnets for 
the purpose of picturing the married man and his boy- 
friend as rivals for the embrace of a mistress ; and thus 
publicly proclaimed his own dishonour ? How could he 
have been sensitive' to the least whisper of ill-fame that 
was breathed against the Earl, and bewail the pity of his 
growing common in the mouths of men, if he himself had 
been in the stews with him 3 and done his best to per- 
petuate the fact by recording the most damning testi- 
mony ? How could he have charged his young friend 
with deception, baseness, and ill-deeds, when, if such 
things had been true, he would have been first in doing 
these very offences — ten-fold worse in doing them, and a 
thousand-fold worse in writing of them ? How could he 
remonstrate with the Earl on his evil courses, warn him. 
about his health, and charge him with gracing impiety 
with his presence, if he had been the guilty partner in his 
fall ? How could he think his beloved would show ; like 
an Idol,' if he had laboured so sedulously to flaw the 
image he had set up, and so befouled it with dirt F How 

o 2 



196 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

should he live in the eyes of posterity as the express image 
of beauty, truth, and natural nobleness, if he had de- 
nounced his moral deformity, reproached him bitterly for 
his falsehood, and devoted passionate sonnets to register 
his degradation ? Such a view of Shakspeare's character 
is insanely absurd. It is not possible that he should have 
shown his love, or sought to honour the Earl in any such 
way. It would indeed have been embalming the life, in- 
scribing the monument, and 'showing his head' worthily, 
so as to prove his love, with a vengeance ! And from all 
we know and hear of the man — gather from the aim and 
object of the sonnets — see of his knowledge of human 
nature, his instinct for law, his sincerity and fidelity to his 
friends — we are compelled to indignantly spurn a theory 
that demands such a sacrifice of truth and probability. 
We would rather believe what Shakspeare himself has 
said than what any of his commentators have surmised. 
Any one who can think that our Poet would be guilty of 
such a sacrilege to that sacred sweetness of friendship 
which he had felt so intimately and brooded over so 
lovingly, can never have drawn near to the spirit of Shak- 
speare, and apprehended its uprightness and sincereness — 
its lofty chivalry and sense of honour — the largeness and 
clearness of his nature — the smiling serenity, as of the 
fixed stars — the capacious calm that broods over the pro- 
found depths of his soul — the abiding strength of his cha- 
racter, which' embodies the idea of power in complaisant 
plenitude — the infinite sweetness and peaceful self-posses- 
sion — which are the express qualities of this man, whom 
Nature bare with so great a love, and endowed with so 
goodly a heritage. Such a reading would imply chaos 
where all was order, stark madness in the sanest of men, 
fearful folly in the wisest, worthlessness in the worthiest, 
unnaturalness in the most natural, and be altogether truer 
to Nat Lee at his maddest than to Shakspeare. It is the 
very opposite of him in every respect. And not only is 



PROOFS OF PURITY. 197 

it opposed to all we believe, and all the testimony we may 
ball on the subject, but the sonnets themselves will disprove 
it, As we have said, if such an affair as has been imagined 
had ever occurred, it would have been when their friend- 
ship was in its budding- time. It is imaged in sonnet 33 
as taking place in the dawn, when the Earl would have 
been his friend but for ' one hour,' just when he had pro- 
mised a ' beauteous day ! ' And, at least years afterwards, 
the Poet is able to say, when speaking in his own proper 
person, that — - 

■ 6 To no other pass my verses tend 
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell.' 

How could this be so if he and the Earl had been 
actors in the dark drama conjectured, and the Poet had 
written for the purpose of exposure ? And he can still 
greet his friend with this remarkable sonnet — 

6 Let not my love be called Idolatry, 
Nor my beloved as an Idol show ; 
Since all alike my songs and praises be 
To one, of one, still such, and ever so ! 
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, 
Still constant in a wondrous excellence ; 
Therefore my verse, to constancy confined, 
One thing expressing leaves out difference : 
Fair, kind and true, is all my argument, 
Fair, kind and true, varying to other words ; 
And in this change is my invention spent, 
Three themes in one which wondrous scope affords: 
Fair, kind and true, have often lived alone, 
Which three till now never kept seat in one? 

Now if the sad story as against Shakspeare had been 
true, this statement would be absolutely false in every 
particular. It would have been the grimmest mockery 
for him to have pleaded against his Beloved looking like 
an Idol if he had previously chronicled his fall into the 



198 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

moral gutter where Shakspeare is supposed to have lain, 
wallowing. His songs could not have been ' all alike ' 
devoted to the praise of his unchangeable truth and won- 
derful constancy, if he had denounced his deception and 
raged in rhyme against his falsehood. It could not have 
been ' all alike ' on either side if there had been so marked 
a change in word and deed. The Earl could not have 
been constant in his kindness if the reproaches had been 
aimed at him by the Poet ; nor would the verse have 
been confined to expressing the constancy ; nor could 
6 fair, kind, and true ' be all his argument if he had pas- 
sionately proclaimed the Earl as being foul, unkind, and 
false. The sonnet would contain a lie in each line, known 
to the Earl as such, and be an astounding specimen of 
stupendous effrontery. Again, if the dark story were true, 
what are we to make of sonnet 70 ? If the Earl had 
robbed the Poet of his Mistress and stung him to the 
quick, causing him to denounce his friend's treachery in 
a fury of ungovernable resentment, he could not have 
told the Earl, that he presented a 'pure unstained 
prime ' — 

6 Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, 
Either not assailed, or Victor being charged,' 9 

when both of them would know so well that he had 
been assailed, and that he was a Victor in a far different 
sense. Which are we to believe, Shakspeare himself, or 
those who have interpreted his sonnets with such a wan- 
ton profanity? One of two things — Either the story 
was true, or it was not. If true, he could not directly 
after have extolled this false friend for his truth (sonnet 
54), or given him the character which he has drawn in 
sonnet 70. But to step in for a closer grapple. We will 
once more suppose the story to be true. How then could 
Shakspeare be the first to attack when he had been the 
foremost to err ? How should he blame his young friend 



THE ARGUMENT PERSONALLY IMPOSSIBLE. 199 

for permitting the ' base clouds ' and ' rotton smoke ' to 
hide his morning brightness, taunt him with sneaking to 
westward with ' this disgrace,' hold him responsible for 
the ' base clouds,' overtaking himself and tell him that 
tears of repentance would be of no avail, that his shame 
could not 'give physic' to Shakspeare's grief, for no one 
could speak well of such a ' salve ' as that which might 
heal the wound but could never ( cure the disgrace ? ' 
How could he thus throw such puerile and petulant ex- 
clamations at the Earl, his young friend, had he been the 
older sinner ? But for his own connexion with the woman, 
the Earl would not have been brought within reach of her 
snares. It would be his own baseness that made the 
Earl's deception possible. It was he who had let the base 
clouds overtake both. The youth could only have loosely 
4 strayed ' where the man of years had first deliberately 
gone. The Earl would see what a pretty comment it was 
on the ' husbandry in honour,' which the Poet had urged 
so eloquently, if he thus admitted that he was living in 
such dishonour. The falsehood of falsehoods was Shaks- 
peare's own, his was the baseness, black beyond compari- 
son, the disgrace that was past all cure. 

After the death of Tybalt, Eomeo, fearing the effect 
on Juliet, asks— 

6 Does she not think me an old murderer, 
Now I have stained the childhood of our joy? ' 

feeling that this blot of blood on the newly-turned leaf 
of his life, has soaked backwards through the whole book. 
So must the Poet have felt if the Earl had discovered any 
such black blot in his character ; if he had found that all 
the professions of love, sole and eternal, whispered in pri- 
vate and proclaimed in public, were totally false ; if he 
had proved his vaunted singleness in love to be a most 
repulsive specimen of double-dealing. With what con- 
science could the Poet turn round when caught by the 



200 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

friend, who had only followed his footsteps, and upbraid 
him for the disgrace to himself, the treachery to their 
friendship ? If he had not had a mistress he would not 
have lost a friend. Or how could he reproach his friend 
with breaking a ' twofold-truth ? '— 

s Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee ; 
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me,' 

whilst ignoring his own breach of the moral law and the 
marriage tie? The Earl would know what a double- 
dyed sinner he was ; he would see through the moral 
blasphemy of his solemn twaddle. He would appreciate 
the value of his arguments for marriage, and his conse- 
cration of their friendship, when thus illustrated. He 
would see how apposite was the exclamation ' ah me, but 
yet thou mightst, my Sweet, forbear,' and chide him for 
the ' pretty wrongs ' committed when he was ' sometime 
absent ' from the Earl's heart, if this absence was for a 
purpose so vile. If the story had been true, then the 
position taken by the Poet would be utterly fatal, and the 
arguments foolishly false. It would be the hardened 
sinner obviously playing the part of the injured innocent; 
every charge he makes against his friend cuts double- 
edged against himself. How could he dare to speak of 
the Earl's ' sensual fault,' and talk of bringing in sense, to 
look on this weakness of his friend's nature in a sensible 
way, if he himself had been doing secret wrong to his 
own reputation, his dear friendship, his wife, his little 
ones ? How could he thus patronise his frail friend who 
knew that the speaker was far frailer ? How should he 
say, ' no more be grieved at that which thou hast done,' 
and try to make excuses for him, if he himself had done 
that which was infinitely worse ? The Earl might weep, 
and the Poet might speak of the tears as rich enough to 
ransom all his ill-deeds ; but they would not redeem the 
character of Shakspeare ; the friend, with all his repent- 



THE DARK STORY IS FALSE. 201 

ance, could never have cured the married man's disgrace. 
He might affect to speak of the Earl's doings as 4 pretty 
wrongs ' that befitted his years, but his own sins could 
not be looked on as ' pretty ; ' these could not in any 
sense befit his own years. 

How should Shakspeare ask — - 

' Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, 
And make me travel forth without my cloak f ' 

It is not possible for any man to ask such a question 
under the circumstances supposed. It would be too bare- 
faced a bit of hypocrisy ! His cloak ! Why, he would 
have been travelling forth in the cloak of a most hideous 
and disgusting disguise. He would be a base lecher 
cloaking himself in a demure morality. Shakspeare, were 
he the speaker, could not have travelled forth without his 
cloak, it would have clung only too near to nature. Such 
a method of treating the whole matter would be a blun- 
der worse than the crime. And to imagine for an instant 
that Shakspeare, the man who was all eye, could be blind 
to so patent a fact is as foolish as the story is false. It 
cannot be the Poet speaking, because the speaker must 
be personally blameless to have any warrant or justifi- 
cation dramatically or morally for awarding the blame. 
Shakspeare could not say of his love for his friend, that 
it was a love that might indeed be called true. It could 
not be true if so false and full of lies. Shakspeare could 
not say, and ' yet thou might'st my seat l forbear,' and 
still assume to have his sole seat only in the heart of his 
friend, and allude to the pretty wrongs committed when 
absent from his heart. Nor could he say ' If I lose thee 
my loss is my love's gain,' when he had sworn a hundred 
times that this friend was his only love. Further, the 
speaker is not a married man. If he had been, he could 

1 So read by the upholders of the Personal Theory. 



202 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

not but have blamed himself when flinging reproaches 
so recklessly at his friend, or in the lull that followed, 
when he tried to find excuses for him. Had he been a 
married man, there would have been no need of charging 
himself with that one least fault in the world, an overmuch 
charity in construing ; ' himself corrupting ' by his large 
liberality towards his friend. He need not have sought 
for so far-fetched a fault as that of straining a point in 
excusing his friend's sins more 6 than they are,' because 
' all men make faults,' and ' even I in this,' that is in being 
so very charitable ; the only fault of which the speaker 
is conscious ! A married man could not charge the single 
one with his shame for what he had done being inadequate 
to give physic to his grief. Nor could he make that 
appeal to the public, ' for no man well of such a salve can 
speak,' if he were known to be a married man who had 
been found out in keeping a Mistress. It would not be 
the salve of which men would speak ; but the moral sore ! 
Lastly, the speaker is not a man at all. There is no men- 
tion of the speaker's sex — the allusion to 4 him ' in sonnet 
34 being merely proverbial and perfectly general. This 
suppression cannot be without meaning ; it makes greatly 
for my reading, and I shall show that the speaker is a 
woman addressing her lover and the woman-rival who 
has drawn her lover away from her side ; a woman 
whose love is pure and who being free from personal 
blame has a right to reproach both the Earl and the 
lady who had professed to be the friend of both, and 
whom she suspects of having taken advantage of their 
friendship to ensnare the Earl and keep him in the strong 
toils of her wanton grace, The attitude 9 the arguments, 
the personal consciousness, are all wrong when applied 
to a guilty man ; they are only possible to an innocent 
woman, Nowhere do we meet the blinking glance of 
conscious guilt ; but at every turn of the subject the clear 
straight-forward look of honest love. The love and pos- 



THE SPEAKER IS A WOMAN. 203 

session are of that absolute kind which only the woman 
can claim. The ' loss in love ' would touch her infinitely 
more nearly than it could a man. Such a connexion as 
is supposed need not, would not. take man from man in 
any such way as is here spoken of. If the woman were 
of such a character that both men could find her, there 
need be no loss whatever. And if Southampton had 
stolen Shakspeare's Mistress and afterwards repented, 
Shakspeare would not have had the loss i^Tho thou repent, 
yet 1 have still the lossJ son. 3d) — he might have had the 
woman again. In the personal interpretation of the first 
sonnet of this series we are positively asked to suppose 
Shakspeare to be of such a character as. in the midst of 
debauchery, to require his good saint and better angel 
the Earl of Southampton, or the Earl of Pembroke (* a 
more exquisite song than the other '). to keep him from 
hell — toward which in the absence of this guardian-spirit 
he inevitably tends. Yet he would maunder on the 
subject like one of his own characters, half-drunk, half- 
imbecile. Eor the speaker has no misgiving lest he may 
be going to hell on his own account, or because of his 
connexion with the bad angel — the worser spirit. Oh, no ; 
the way, it seems, for this female Evil to draw him soon to 
hell is not by drawing him to her. but to tempt his friend 
to her side. One might have thought that would have 
been one way of saving Shakspeare, but not the way to 
win him soonest to hell. And if the woman would ' cor- 
rupt his saint to be a devil,' had she not corrupted him to 
be a devil I And if so, could they not all three continue 
in their devilhood comfortably corrupt ? And where 
would have been the need of all this maudlin fuss ? For, 
there is no hint that it would be the best course for 
Shakspeare to ' clear out ' as quickly as possible ; his sole 
concern is lest his friend should be taken in. Is it not a 
likely story ? 

Then the personal reading does not, cannot anywhere 



204 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

touch the bottom and gauge the meaning of sonnets 133 
and 134. 'Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his 
guard.' Against what, if a man were the speaker ? And 
how could a man use the expression ; for I being pent 
in thee,' or ' thou wilt not, nor he will not be free,' when 
the least sense of humour would suggest that his friend 
had been all too free, if these complaints and charges had 
been made by a man. And, what would be the ' bond ' 
alluded to, when sonnet 144, the darkest of all, shows the 
case to be one of suspicion only, a jealousy on account 
of the lady's character, not one of certainty, and the 
most passionate sonnet of the whole series expresses no- 
thing more than a doubt after all ? The most searching 
investigation yet made will prove that there is not the 
least foundation for the dark story as told against our 
Poet, save that which has been laid in the prurient imagi- 
nation of those who have so wantonly sought to defile the 
memory of Shakspeare. And for the rest of our lives we 
may safely and unreservedly hold of him, what Anthony 
Bacon said of his brother Francis, that he was ' too wise 
to be abused ; too honest to abuse.' 



205 



DRAMATIC SONNETS, 



ELIZABETH VERNON'S JEALOUSY OF HER LOVER, 
LORD SOUTHAMPTON, AND HER FRIEND, LADY 
RICH. 



ELIZABETH VERNON S SOLILOQUY. 

Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 

Which like two spirits do suggest me still ; 

The better angel is a man right fair ; 

The worser spirit a woman coloured ill : 

To win me soon to hell, my female evil 

Tempteth my better angel from my side, l 

And would corrupt my saint to be a devil ; 

Wooing his purity with her foul 2 pride : 

And whether that my angel be turned fiend, 

Suspect I may, yet not directly tell ; 

But being both from me, both to each friend, 3 

I guess one angel in another's hell ! 

Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt, 
Till my bad angel fire my good one out. 4 

(144.) 

1 e Tempteth my better Angel from my side.' 

So in Othello, ' Yea, curse his better Angel from his side.' 

2 ' With her foul pride.' 

The copy of this sonnet in the ' Passionate Pilgrim ' reads ' with her 
fair pride.' 

3 l Both to each friend? Here is proof that the absent twain were 
friends before this affair. 

' Till my bad Angel fire my good one out.' 
We may perhaps get at the root idea of this line by aid of an expression of 
tragic intensity in ' King Lear ' — ' He that parts us shall bring a brand from 
Heaven and fire us hence like foxes.' In the present ine*»r»oe, I presume, 



206 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

ELIZABETH VERNON TO THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON. 

Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
Flatter the mountain -tops with sovereign eye, 
Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy ; 
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 
With ugly rack on his celestial face, 
And from the forlorn world his visage hide, 
Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace : 
Even so my Sun one early morn did shine 
With all-triumphant splendour on my brow, 
Bat out, alack ! he was but one hour mine ; 
The region-cloud hath masked him from me now : 

Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth ; 

Suns of the world may stain when Heaven's sun 

staineth. (33.) 

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day 
And make me travel forth without my cloak, 
To let base clouds o'ertake me on my way, 
Hiding thy bravery in their rotton smoke ? 
'Tis not enough that thro' the cloud thou break 
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face, 
For no man well of such a salve can speak 
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace : 
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief ; 
Tho' thou repent, yet I have still the loss ; 
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief 
To him l that bears the strong offence's cross : 

Ah ! but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, 
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds. 

(34.) 

the fox who is in hiding, — the Earl who is foxing it — will have to be fired 
out with a brand from the other place. The allusion — here humorously 
used — is to the burning out of the fox with fire-brands, at which Shak- 
speare must have assisted when he was a country lad. 

1 This ' him ' has misled readers into thinking it characterised the 
speaker's sex, but it is merely and obviously a general allusion to a well- 
known proverbial truth. The speaker's sex is suppressed through the whole 
of these sonnets. We have only the feeling, which in poetry is the greatest 
fact of all, to guide us, and that indicates a woman, and proves the passion 
to be one of winnowed purity. 



THE LADY'S EXCUSE FOR HER LOVER'S FAULTS. 207 

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done : 

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud ; 

Clouds and eclipses stain both Aloon and Sun, 

And loathsome cankers live in sweetest bud ; 

All men make faults, and even I in this, 

Authorising thy trespass with compare, 

Myself corrupting, 1 salving thy amiss ; 

Excusing thy sins more than thy sins are ; 

For to thy sensual fault I bring in sense, 2 

Thy adverse party is thy Advocate,^— 

And 'gainst myself a lawful plea commence ; 

Such civil war is in my love and hate 
That I an accessary needs must be 3 
To that sweet thief which sourly robs from me, 

(35.) 

Those pretty 4 wrongs that liberty commits 
When I am sometime absent from thy hearty 
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits, 
For still temptation follows where thou art : 
(xentle thou art, and therefore to be won, 
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed ; 

1 * Myself corrupting.' It lias been supposed that the speaker of this 
sonnet, "being a man. finds a precedent for the fault of his Mend by com- 
paring it with his own. A fair sample of the way in which these sonnets 
have been unfairly read ! The sonnet contains nothing of the sort. The 
speaker says, l All men make faults,' and on that account she has tried to 
excuse him : has excused him even more than his sins called for. Her fault 
is that she has authorised his fault hy making this comparison in his favour ; 
corrupted herself in excusing him and ' salving ' his misbehaviour. ( Even I in 
this am to blame, but such is my love I cannot help it." Here is absolute 
proof that the speaker is not and cannot be that corrupt married man sup- 
posed. If he had been so corrupt it did not remain for him to corrupt him- 
self by being so charitable when salving the misbehaviour of his young friend. 

i To thy sensual fault I bring in sense.' 
Something very like this in thought and expression is reversed in ' Measure 
for Measure ' : Angelo says of Isabel — 

' She speaks such sense that my sense breeds with it." 

3 ' Xeeds must be.' That is an allusion to the powerful bond of sonnet 134. 

4 ' Pretty ' in the sense of ' little.' 

1 There is a saying old. but not so witty, 
That when a thing is little it is pretty.' — Taylor, the Water Poet. 
Also see the subject illustrated by l Moth ' for the edification of Don Arm ado. 



208 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

And when a woman woos, 1 what woman's son 

Will sourly leave her till she 2 have prevailed ? 

Ay me ! but yet thou might'st, my Sweet ! 3 forbear, 

And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, 

Who lead thee in their riot even there 

Where thou art forced to break a two-fold truth, — 

Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee ; 

Thine, by thv beauty being false to me ! 

(41.) 

That thou hast her, it is not all nry grief; 

And yet it may be said I loved her dearly ; 

That she hath thee is of my wailing chief, 

A loss in love that touches me more nearly : 

Loving offenders, thus I will excuse ye ! 

Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her; 4 

And for my sake even so doth she abuse me, 

Suffering my friend for my sake to approve her : 5 

1 ( When a woman woos.' 

' For why should others' false adulterate eyes 
Give salutation to my sportive blood ? ' 

The Earl to Eliz. Vernon, Sonnet 121. 

2 l Till she have prevailed.' The Quarto reads, ' Till he have prevailed.' 
An obvious misprint, corrected by Tyrwhitt. 

3 My sweet, forbear.' The Quarto reads, l my seat, forbear,' which has 
been made the most of by the advocates of the Personal Theory. Malone held 
that the context showed it to be a corruption ; this my reading proves ' My 
Sweet ' might fairly be accepted as the true text, if only on accoimt of the 
' sourly ' of the preceding line, — these are two of the poet's favourite twin- 
terms, almost inseparable : e. g. 

'That sweet thief which sourly robs from me.'— Sonnet 35. 

' Were it not thy sour leisure gave sweet leave.' — Sonnet 39. 
' To make a sweet lady sad is a sour offence.' 

Troilus and Cressida, act iii. sc. 1. 
' Speak sweetly, man, although thy looks be sour' 

4 'Thou dost love her because thou knowest I love her' is not an argu- 
ment for a man to use. A man in such a case would not love the mistress 
because he knew that she was his friend's. The philosophy is altogether 
womanly and innocent, not impure and pimpish. 

5 'To approve her.' To 'approve ' in Shakspeare's age signified to make 
good, to establish, and is so defined in ' Cawdrey's Alphabetical Table of Hard 
English Words ' (1604). Thus the meaning here is, that the absent lady has 



ELIZABETH VERNON'S REPROACH OF HER COUSIN. 209 

If I lose thee, my loss is my love's gain, 
And losing her, my friend hath found that loss ; 
Both find each other, and I lose both twain, 
And both, for my sake, lay on me this cross ; 

But here's the joy; my friend and I are one, 
Sweet flattery ! then she loves but me alone. 

(42.) 



ELIZABETH VERNON TO LADY RICH. 

Beshrew that heart that makes my heart to groan 

For that deep wound it gives my friend and me ! 

Is't not enough to torture me alone, 

But slave to slavery my sweet'st friend must be ? 

Me from myself thy cruel eye hath taken, 

And my next self thou, harder, hast engrossed ; 

Of him, myself, and thee, T am forsaken ; 

A torment thrice three-fold thus to be crossed ! 

Prison my heart in thy steel bosom's ward, 

But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail ; 

Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard ; l 

Thou canst not then use rigour in my jail : 

And yet thou wilt ; for I, being pent in thee, 2 
Perforce am thine, and all that is in me. 

(133.) 

So, now I have confessed that he is thine, 
And I myself am mortgaged to thy will, 
Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine 
Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still : 
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, 
For thou art covetous and he is kind ; 
He learned but surety-like to write for me 
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind i 

permitted the speaker's Lover to make good, or establish, or test her affec- 
tion for the speaker's self. The thought is quite honest and innocent. In 
no guilty sense could the trial be spoken of as imposed for the speaker's sake. 

1 So in the ' Arcadia/ book iii., Philoclea, a woman, prays on her lover's 
behalf— ' Whatever becomes of me, preserve the virtuous Musidorus.' 

2 ' Being pent from liberty, as I am now.'— Richard III. act i. sc. 4. 



510 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take 5 
Thou usurer that putt'st forth all to use. 
And sue a friend came debtor for my sake ; 
So him I lose thro' my unkind abuse ! 

Him have I lost ; thou hast both him and me ; 

He pays the whole, and yet I am not free. 

(134.) 

Take all my loves, my Love, yea, take them all, 
What hast thou then more than thou hadst before? 
No Love ! my love, that thou may'st true love call, 
All mine was thine, before thou hadst this more : 
Then if for my love thou my Love receivest, 
I cannot blame thee for my love thou usest ; 
. But, yet, be blamed, if thou thyself deceivest 
By wilful taste of what thyself refusest : 
I do forgive thy robbery, gentle thief, 1 
Altho' thou steal thee all my poverty ! 
And yet, love knows, it is a greater grief 
To bear love's wrong, than hate's known injury : 
Lascivious Grace, in whom all ill well shows, 2 
Kill me with spites ! yet we must not be foes. 

(40.) 

Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy of her lover the Earl of 
Southampton and her friend and cousin Lady Eich, is told 
in these nine sonnets, which are now for the first time put 
together : they go to Autolycus's tune of ' Two Maids woo- 
ing a Man.' The first sonnet contains a soliloquy on the 
subject, a form employed more than once in the dramatic 
sonnets. Then we have five sonnets addressed to the 
Earl, and three to the lady of whom Elizabeth Vernon 

1 ' Gentle thief '— 

1 You thief of love ! what, have you come by night, 
And stolen my love's heart from him ? ' 
This is spoken by a woman to a woman in the ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 

2 So in ' sonnet 150/ which is addressed to a woman, 

' Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill ? ' 
Also Cleopatra is called the 

'Wrangling queen, whom everything becomes ! the vilest things become them- 
selves in her? 



A CLOSER READING DEMANDED. 211 

is jealous. The first, as we have seen, has been held 
to tell a tale most dark and damning to our poet's moral 
character. But such an interpretation could only result 
from the shallowest possible reading. The sound of the 
sonnet has frightened readers from the sense. It is only 
tragic in terms. If the state of the case had been such 
as some readers have accepted, the story dark as they 
feared, it could scarcely have been so undecided. How- 
ever positive they may have felt that Shakspeare had 
lost his mistress and made a fool of himself, the speaker 
hi this sonnet is by no means so certain, but lives in 
doubt how the matter may stand. The imagery, the 
good and bad angel, is necessarily chosen on purpose to 
indicate the uncertainty, the undetermined fate. Thus 
the most desperate sonnet of the series is positively incon- 
clusive of anything. Let us take it up for a much closer 
look at it. 

It must be borne in mind that we are endeavouring 
to decipher a secret history of an unexampled kind. 
We can get little help except from the written words 
themselves. We must not be too confident of walking 
by our own light ; we must rely more implicitly on that 
inner light of the sonnets, left like a lamp in a tomb of 
old, which will lead us with the greater certainty to the 
precise spot where we shall touch the secret spring and 
make clear the mystery. We must ponder any the 
least minutias of thought, feeling, or expression, and not 
pass over one mote of meaning because we do not easily 
see its significance. Some little thing that we cannot 
make fit with the old reading may be the key to the 
right interpretation. 

Elizabeth Vernon, I maintain, is the speaker of these 
nine sonnets. She has two 'loves,' one that brings 
comfort, the other causes a feeling of despair. The 
words ; love ' and ' friend ' are terms mutually con- 
vertible both to a woman speaker as well as to a 

p 2 



212 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

man. 1 These ' loves' of hers are like two spirits which she 
personifies as a good angel and a bad angel, and these 
keep tempting or instigating her with their conflicting 
suggestions of good and evil. The one, Southampton, 
is a ' man right fair.' The ' worser spirit ' is a woman 
6 coloured ill.' This is her cousin, Lady Eich. The 
' coloured ill ' applies to that public report of her reputa- 
tion, which in her later years grew worse and worse, until 
with darkened fame she went down in a preternatural 
night. This 'female evil' is trying, as Elizabeth Vernon 
suspects, to tempt the Earl from her side. They are both 
absent from her, and they are both friends to each other, 
the intimacy being of the closest all round, for the sus- 
pected lady is still a personal friend of Elizabeth Vernon's 
— still one of her ' loves,' and still an angel, or the other 
could not be the better angel — and she fears the worst ; 
uncertainty always fearing the worst. She fears that the 
lady will ' corrupt her saint to be a devil,' ' wooing his 
purity with her foul pride,' that is, with her pride in the 
power of her charms to do so foul a thing, and play so 
uncousinly a part. But — and here comes an allusion of 
the utmost importance, though seeming so casual, so care- 
lessly made — this being the state of the case, her two 
friends so thick with each other, she camiot help fearing 
lest the present affair may turn out like one that has pre- 
viously occurred. ' I guess one angel in another's hell ! ' 
Mark this. She does not guess one angel in the other's 
hell, which would be the Earl in Lady Eich's hell — what- 
ever that might mean 2 — but another s hell, which implies 



1 The mother of Essex, in writing to her ' sweet Kobin,' habitually speaks 
of Christopher Blount, her third husband, as 'mj friend.' So the Psalmist 

' Mv lovers and my friends stand aloof from my soul.' — Psalm xxxviii. v. 11. 

An original love-letter of Sir George Hayward, written in 1550, begins 'My 
dearest Friend.' 1 — Howards Collection, p. 521. 

2 l Hell ' is generally supposed to mean a place or state of punishment, 
and t is used by this speaker in line* 5 and 6 of +he first sonnet to ex- 
press great suffering. 



A LOVER'S HELL. 213 

another's sin and suffering. This other's ' hell,' I take it, 
is a thought of another lady, who was a friend of theirs, 
and who caused and suffered ' helV in a former transac- 
tion. Lady Eich is the ' angel' of this line, not the Earl. 
She is one of the two angels of the whole sonnet, as afore- 
said. Here she becomes the angel for the sake of an 
allusion to another angel whom she seems likely to re- 
semble in character. Elizabeth Vernon loves Lady Eich 
at first too much to believe her false ; therefore, so far, 
she is one of her angels. And, even under the cir- 
cumstances, black as they look, she only guesses one 
(this) angel may be in the ' hell ' created by ' another 
angel,' one whom they both knew, had faith in, and 
were deceived in ; one with whom the Earl had given 
cause for Elizabeth Vernon to speak of him in this way. 

If this were so, if this angel were to prove false as an- 
other angel — satirically so called — had done, it would be a 
4 hell ; ' l hell to the speaker as well as to the fallen angel ; 

1 'Hell.' It has been suggested that Shakspeare's frequent and peculiar 
use of the word ' hell ' in his earlier writings may have arisen from the fact 
that the lower part of the stage was called ' hell.' In the game of ' Barley- 
break,' also, a player may get into ' hell.' But the hell of lovers was a com- 
mon theme with the Elizabethan poets. One of Spenser's missing poems 
bore that title. And in his ' Hymn in honour of Love," printed in 1596, 
although not all new, but re-formed, the same writer has thus painted the 
lover's hell : — 

1 The gnawing envy, the heart-fretting fear, 
The vain surmises, the distrustful shows, 
The false reports that flying tales do bear, 
The doubts, the dangers, the delays, the woes, 
The feined friends, the unassured foes, 
With thousands more than any tongue may tell 
Do make a lover's life a wretched hell.' 

Shakspeare may have had this sonnet in mind when he wrote his. There 
is also something exceedingly suggestive of his sonnet in the idea and ex- 
pression of one of Drayton's, the 20th : — 

1 An evil spirit, your beauty haunts me still, 
Which ceaseth not to tempt me to each ill • 
Thus am I still provoked to every evil 
By this good-wicked spirit, sweet angel-devil.' 



214 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

and she feels that this drawing away of her saint from 
her side is just the way to win her ' soon to hell ' — the 
hell created by the false friend. But she is not sure, she 
only lives in doubt — 

6 Till my bad angel fire my good one out.' 

And the Earl, her lover and ' good angel,' shall come 
back to her and smile away all uncertainty. She can 
only guess that the present drawing away of the Earl 
from her side may in effect be the same as occurred once 
before ; she will not know until the bad angel shall start 
her lover home again, as we say, with a ' flea in his ear,' or 
as Garibaldi proposed serving the French Emperor. It 
will be seen that the coming back does not imply an occa- 
sional visit, but an absolute passing into another's posses- 
sion, and the real state of matters is only to be fathomed 
by his coming back to her once for all or never coming back 
at all, not by his returning to say where he has been. 

With regard to the other c affair 7 and another angel 
which this sonnet alludes to, that is corroborated in the 
Earl's own confessions. Farther on, we shall find that he 
does admit having been the victim of a woman's ' syren 
tears,' the subject of a wretched delusion. He pleads 
guilty to that ' sensual fault ' of his nature which he is 
charged with in these sonnets, but not in this instance. 
He emphatically denies that he was guilty in this sad 
case. He says the lady wronged him by her unkindness. 
He suffered in ' her crime.' And there is proof that she 
had done so in the fact of her being first to ask forgive- 
ness and tender the ' humble salve,' the healing balm 
offered in a penitent attitude, which was most suited to 
the heart she had so wounded. The humble salve shows 
that the lady, on finding herself mistaken, her suspicions 
wrongful, had eaten ' humble pie,' and eaten it with a 
good grace. 

In the next sonnet the lady reproaches the Earl for 



THE CRY OF A WOMAN. 215 

his having been led away from her side when it was 
yet the early dawn of their love. Her sun had but shone 
for ' one hour ' with ' all triumphant splendour ' on her 
brow, when the ' region-cloud ' came over him, and hid 
him from her. Still, she will think the best in his eclipse. 
Her love shall not turn from him. Even though darkly 
hidden from her, she will have faith that he will shine 
again with all the early brightness. She will believe that 
the sun in heaven will be sullied by the clouds that pass 
over it soon as that her earthly sun can be stained by 
the clouds which mask him from her now. But the fear 
increases and the feeling deepens in the next sonnet, and 
we hear the tremulous voice of virgin love, the low cry of 
a shy loving nature, conscious that it has publicly let fall 
a veil of maidenly reserve, She pleads, ' why didst thou 
promise such a beauteous day, and make me travel forth 
icithout my cloak ? ' Trustingly, confidingly, she has left her 
wonted place of shelter ; she has ventured all on this new 
affection. The morning was so bright, the sun shone with 
such promise of a glorious day, she has come forth unfit 
to meet the storm which the gathering clouds portend. 
Her unprotected condition is pourtrayed most exquisitely 
with that natural touch and image, solely feminine, of 
her having travelled forth ' ■without Iter cloak' Why did 
her lover make her do this, and let ' base clouds ' over- 
take her on her way ? It will not be enough for him to 
break through that ' rotten smoke ' of cloud to kiss the 
tears off her storm-beaten face, because others have seen 
how he has treated her. Her maiden fame has been 
injured, her maiden dignity wounded. Xo one can speak 
well of such a ' salve ' as heals the personal wound and 
cures not the public disgrace ; others are witnesses that 
she has been mocked. Though he may repent, yet she 
has lost that which he cannot restore. The offender may 
be sorry, yet, as every one knows, that lends but a Aveak re- 
lief to the victim who has to bear the ' cross ' of a weighty 



216 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

offence. There is an injury done which cannot so easily 
be undone. The sentiment is essentially womanly, purely 
maidenly. It shows a sense of honour that has the 
tremulous delicacy of a Perdita. Then comes the re- 
vulsion of feeling, the relief of thought ; she pictures his 
repentance — 

6 Ah, but those tears are pearl which thy love sheds, 
And they are rich, and ransom all ill deeds ! ' 

Do not grieve any more, she continues in the next sonnet, 
and in a most loving spirit, she will make all the excuses 
she can for him. Sun and moon have their clouds and 
eclipses, the sweetest buds their cankers, the roses their 
thorns. All men have their faults, and even she will make 
a fault in this, that she is authorising his fault or trans- 
gression by comparison with the faults of others, corrupt- 
ing herself, or herself sinning, in ' salving ' over his 
misbehaviour, and in the largeness of her charity, excusing 
his sins even more than they are, magnifying them for 
more excuse. She will not only look on this fault of his 
nature sensibly, but will also try and take part against 
herself in favour of the ' sweet thief who has robbed her 
of her lover's presence ; such ' civil war is in her love and 
hate ' that she must needs be accessory to the theft. We 
shall soon see the meaning of the line italicised. The ex- 
cuses are still carried on in the fourth of the sonnets 
spoken to the Earl. It is perfectly natural that he should 
have this tendency to commit these pretty wrongs when 
she is sometimes absent from his thoughts. It is a little 
' out of sight, out of mind.' He is young and handsome, 
and pursued by temptation. He is beautiful, therefore 
sure to be assailed. He is kind and yielding, therefore 
he may be won, especially, as in the present instance, when 
a woman woos, and a woman like this cousin of hers, 
who has such power in bearing men off their feet, once 
she has fixed her fatal floating eyes upon them. In whose 



A WOMAN'S SPECIAL PLEADING. 217 

every grace there ' lurks a still and dumb-discoursing 
devil that tempts most cunningly.' 

* Ay me, but yet thou mighfst, my Sweet, forbear, 
And chide thy beauty and thy straying youth, 
Who lead thee in their riot even there 
Where thou art forced to break a two-fold truth ; 
Hers, by thy beauty tempting her to thee ; 
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.' 

Then follows a bit of special pleading, partly very natural 
and partly sophistical. With all the playfulness, however, 
the earnestness is unmistakeable. Naturally enough she 
is sorry if she has lost her female friend, for she loved 
her dearly ; but still more naturally she confesses that the 
loss in love which would touch her most nearly would be 
the loss of her lover. The rest of the sonnet is ingenious 
for love and charity's sake. Surely her lover only loves 
the lady because he knows she loves her, and the lady 
loves him just for the speaker's sake. Both have com- 
bined to lay this cross upon her ; they are just trying her ; 
but — 

' Here's the joy, my friend and I are one, 
Sweet flattery ! then she loves but me alone.' 

This is the tone in which a woman laughs when her heart 
wants to cry. In the next three sonnets the address is 
direct from woman to woman, face to face, and the feel- 
ing is more passionate, the language of more vital import. 
Here are matters that have never been fathomed ; ex- 
pressions that have no meaning if a man were speaking 
to a man. These I interpret thus : — 

Before the Earl of Southampton met with Mistress Ver- 
non, and became enamoured of her, he was somewhat at 
variance with the Earl of Essex. In the declaration of the 
treason of the Earl, signed D., and quoted by Chalmers in 
his ' Suplimental Apology,' we are told that emulations (en- 



218 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

vious rivalries) and differences at Court had risen betwixt 
Essex and Southampton, but the latter Earl's love for the 
cousin of Essex came to heal all, and it bound the two up 
in a bond, strong and long as life, which was only loosened 
by death. Also, at the time of Southampton's marriage, 
the Earl of Essex fell under her Majesty's displeasure for 
furthering, and, as we learn by Mr. Standen, for ^gendering" 
the matter. So that from the hour when Southampton and 
Elizabeth Vernon became one in love, years before they 
were one in law, the Earl was committed in feeling, and, as 
we now see, in fact to the fortunes of the Earl of Essex. 

He followed him through good and evil report. He 
held to him although he had to share the frowns of Her 
Majesty without sharing the smiles which fell on the 
favourite. The influence of Essex was often more fatal 
to friends than to foes, and in this respect the Earl of 
Southampton was far more justly entitled to the epithet 
' unfortunate ' than was Essex himself. He was most un- 
fortunate in this friendship, for it seemed perfectly natural 
when Essex got in the wrong, for all eyes to turn and 
look at his friends to see who was the cause. Her Majesty 
often offered up a scapegoat from amongst his friends in 
this way. The worst of it being that these had to stand 
in the shadow even when he was visited with a burst of 
sunshine. In fact, his friends were always in the shadow 
which he cast. In these sonnets, Elizabeth Vernon feels 
that she is responsible for bringing Southampton under 
this 'bond' of friendship which binds him so fast through 
her. She is bound to the ' slavery ' of the Essex cause by 
family relationship, and through his love for her, South- 
ampton has been brought under the influence of Lady 
Eich's fascinating eyes, through which there looks alter- 
nately an angel of darkness and an angel of light, accord- 
ing to her mood of mind ; that fatal voice, made low and 
soft to imitate modesty and draw the fluttering heart into 
her snare, just as the fowler, with a low warble, tries to 



THE ESSEX BOND. 219 

lure the bird into his net ; that wanton beauty, which can 
make all ill look lovely, and whose every gesture is a 
dumb-show that has but one interpretation for those who 
are caught by her amorous arts and luring lapwing-wiles, 
and also for those that watch and fear for them. Eliza- 
beth Vernon feels that she is the innocent cause of bring- 
ing her dear friend the Earl into this double danger ; the 
danger of too familiar an acquaintanceship with Lady 
Eich, and the danger of a too-familiar friendship with 
Essex, whose perturbed spirit and secret machinations 
are known to her. She blames herself for her ' unkind 
abuse ' in having brought them together. ' Evil befal 
that heart,' she exclaims to her lady cousin, ' for the deep 
wound it gives to me and my friend. Is it not enough 
for you to torture me alone in this way, I who am full of 
timid fears, but you must also make my sweetest friend a 
slave to this slavery which I suffer, and was content to 
suffer whilst it only tormented me ? You held me in your 
power by right of the strongest ; your proud cruel eye 
could do with me almost as you pleased. I was your 
prisoner whom you kept in confinement close pent. You 
hold me by force, and I will not complain of that if I can 
only shield my lover from all danger ; let my heart be his 
guard. I plead with you ; but, alas ! I know it is in 
vain ; you will use rigour in our gaol, and torture your 
poor prisoners. I confess he is yours, and I myself am 
mortgaged to do your bidding. Now let me forfeit my- 
self, and do you restore my lover to be my comfort. Ah, 
you will not, and he will not be free. You are covetous 
and he is kind. Poor fellow, he did but sign his name, 
surety-like, for me under that bond that binds him as fast 
as it binds me, and you will sue him, a friend, who has 
only come to you as a debtor for my sake, and take the 
statute of your beauty, the right of might, you ' usurer 
that put forth all- to use ;' that is, she who takes advantage 
of her loveliness to turn friends into lovers and lovers 



220 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

into political adherents to the Essex cause ; ' take all you" 
can, in virtue of your beauty and our bond. Him have I 
lost ; you have us both. He pays all, yet I am not, can- 
not be free.' The speaker acknowledges a power which 
compels her submission. Then she tries a little coaxing. 
' Take all my loves, my Love,' what then ? You have only 
what you had before. All mine was yours in one sense, 
but ' be blamed ' if you deceive yourself and take it in 
another sense. If you would eat of the fruit of my love, 
come to it fairly by the right gate ; do not climb over the 
Avail, as a thief and a hireling, to steal. Still, for his sake 
I will forgive even robbery, although love knows it is 
far harder to bear this wrong done secretly in the name 
of love than it would be to suffer the injury of hatred 
that was openly known.' And -now we have the summing 
up of the whole matter, the moral of the story. The 
speaker makes her submission almost abject, in obedience 
to a hidden cause, though the words are almost spitten 
out by the force of suppressed feeling — 

' Lascivious Grace, in whom all ill well shows, 
Kill me ivith spites, yet we must not be foes.'' 

Admitting the speaker to be a woman, there must be 
more than a story of rivalry in love implied in those 
lines. Because if one woman be too friendly with an- 
other woman's lover, the sufferer would argue that the 
sooner she and the one who robbed her mind of its peace 
were foes the better for all parties. Rather than continue 
to suffer and bear until quite 'killed with spites,' she 
would say we must be foes, for I cannot, need not, will 
not bear any longer. All the more that it is the woman 
who pursues, an ordinary case would be simple enough. 
But there is a secret and sufficiently potent cause why 
these two should not become foes. The lady knows the 
fierce vindictive nature of her cousin ; she fears lest the 
black eyes should grow baleful, and would almost rather 



THE DARK STORY TOLD FOR THE LAST TIME. 221 

they should be turned on the Earl in wanton love than in 
bitter enmity. So deep is her dread of the one, so great 
her affection for the other. For his sake she resolves to 
bear all the ' spites ' which her cousin's conduct can in- 
flict upon her. For his sake, she and this cousin must 
not be foes. Such is the binding nature of their relation- 
ship, that the speaker feels compelled to be an accessory 
to the 'sweet thief ' that 'sourly robs' from her. She 
will be the slave of her high imperious will, and bear the 
tyranny that tortures her. rather than quarrel. She will 
likewise be subtly politic with her love's profoundest cun- 
ning. And this is whv there is such ' civil war ' in her 
1 love and hate ; ' herein lies the covert meaning that has 
for so long dwelt darkly in these Hues. 

I thmk no one accustomed to judge of evidence in 
poetry can fail to see that the old story of a man speaker 
— a man who is married and keeps his mistress too — and 
that man Shakspeare, has been told for the last time, so 
soon as we have discovered a woman speaker, who is 
thus identified by inner character and outward circum- 
stances. The breath of pure love that breathes fresh as 
one of those summer airs which are the messengers of 
morn, is enough to sweeten the imagination that has been 
tainted by the vulgar story, whilst the look of injured in- 
nocence and the absence of self-reproach, the chiding that 
melts into forgiveness and which was only intended to 
bring the truant back ; the feeling of being left uncovered 
to the public gaze and cloakless to the threatening storm ; 
the face in tears, the rain on the cheek, those ' women's 
weapons, water-drops ; ' x the natural womanliness of the 
expression, 6 Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard,' 
the lines — 

1 Myself I'll forfeit so that other mine 
Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still ! ' 

' Let not women's weapons, water-drops, 
Stain my man's cheeks.' — Lear, act ii. sc. 4. 



222 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

— the wrong done to love, which, though unknown, is 
worse than the known injury of open hatred ; the motive, 
feeling, and excusing words — all are exquisitely femi- 
nine ; whilst the imagery and symbols correspond in the 
thorough est way to the womanly nature of it all. 

The expression " Lascivious Grace, in whom all ill well 
shows, kill me with spites" as spoken from a woman to 
a rival, and applied, according to the story now for the first 
time told, is just one of those flashes of revelation by which 
we see nature caught in the fact ! And by the same sudden 
illumination we catch sight of that Elizabethan Helen, 
the Lady Eich, seen and known in a moment, never to 
be forgotten. 

There is a letter written by Lord Eich to the Earl of 
Essex, dated April 16th, 1597, which has been held to 
be so dark in meaning, so enigmatical in expression, that 
nothing has hitherto been made of its contents. Lady 
Eich had just got out of danger from the small-pox. In 
a letter dated three days later, Eowland White says, ' My 
Lady Eich is recovered of her small-pox, without any 
blemish to her beautiful face.' Lord Eich's letter refers 
to this illness of his wife, and the consequent danger to 
her fair face, but it also contained an enclosure touching 
certain love-matters therein written of, to the perplexity 
of his lordship, and relating to a ' fair Maid ' in whom the 
Lady Eich was interested, of whose beauty she was so 
careful as not to send the writing direct for fear of in- 
fection : — ' My Lord, your Sister, being loth to send you 
any of her infection, hath made me an instrument to send 
you this enclosed epistle of Dutch true or false love ; 
wherein, if I be not in the right, I may be judged more 
infected than ntteth my profession, and to deserve worse 
than the pox of the smallest size. If it fall out so, I dis- 
burden myself, and am free from such treason, by my 
disclosing it to a Councillor, who, as your Lordship well 
knows, cannot be guilty of any such offence. Your Lord- 



LORD RICH'S MYSTIFICATION. 223 

ship sees, by this care of a fair maid's beauty, she doth 
not altogether despair of recovery of her own again ; 
which, if she did, assured by envy of others' fairness, 
would make her willingly to send infection among them. 
This banishment makes me that I cannot attend on you ; 
and this wicked disease will cause your sister this next 
week to be at more charge to buy a masker's visor to 
meet you dancing in the fields than she would on [once ?] 
hoped ever to have done. If you dare meet her, I beseech 
you preach patience unto her, which is my only theme of 
exhortation. Thus, over saucy to trouble your Lordship's 
weightier affairs, I take my leave, and ever remain your 
Lordship's poor brother to command, Bo. Eich.' Now, 
to my thinking, there is no more natural explanation of 
this mysterious letter than that the ' fair Maid ' of whose 
beauty Lady Eich is so thoughtful a guardian, and to 
whom the 4 epistle of Dutch true or simulated love ' evi- 
dently belongs, is Elizabeth Vernon, cousin both to Lady 
Eich and to the Earl of Essex, and that we here catch a 
glimpse of this very group of sonnets, or a part of them, 
as they pass from hand to hand. The ' Epistle ' over 
which Lord Eich tries to shake his wise head jocosely, is 
not sealed up from him. He has read it, and finds it only 
sealed in the sense ; it is, as the unlearned say, all Greek 
to him, or, as he says, it is " Dutch." The subject, too, 
is amatory, so much he perceives ; but whether it pertains 
to real life or to fiction is beyond his reach ; he merely 
hopes the brother, who is a Councillor of State, will dis- 
cover no treason in it. If this love- epistle, the purport of 
which his Lordship failed to fathom, should have consisted 
of the sonnets that Elizabeth Vernon speaks to Lady Eich 
in her jealousy, it would fit the circumstances of the case 
as nothing else could, and perfectly account for Lord 
Eich's perplexity. We may imagine how little he would 
make of them when their meaning has kept concealed 
from so many other prying eyes for two centuries and a 



224 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

half. If ray suggestion be right, this letter gives us a 
most interesting glimpse of the persons concerned, and 
of the light in which they viewed the sonnets ; here con- 
tributing to the private amusement of Lady Eich, her 
brother Essex, and Elizabeth Vernon, whilst Lord Eich 
is not in the secret. 

This jealousy of Mistress Vernon does not appear to 
have gone very deep or left any permanent impression. 
It certainly did not part the fair cousins, for their intimacy 
continued to be of the closest, at least up to the time of 
Essex's death, as is shown by Eowland White's letters ; 
and we find that the Earl of Southampton was one of the 
chief mourners at the funeral of Mountjoy. Also it was 
to Lady Eich's house that Elizabeth Vernon retired in 
August, 1598, and there her babe was born, which she 
named Penelope, after her cousin, Lady Eich. There 
was only matter enough in it to supply one of the subjects 
for Shakspeare's poetry ' among his private friends.' 

I have not been able to date these sonnets ; they be- 
long to the time at which the ■ Midsummer Night's Dream' 
was written, but that is not fixed with certainty. The 
'jealousy ' may possibly have occurred before the 'jour- 
ney,' but it suits best with my plan to print this group in 
connexion with the lovers' bickerings and flirtations that 
follow. 



225 



A PERSONAL SONNET, 



SHAKSPEAEE ON THE SLANDER. 



This sonnet I read as the Poet's comment on the fore- 
going subject. It is written upon an occasion when the 
Earl has been suspected and slandered, and Shakspeare 
does not consider him to blame. We shall see that the 
Earl himself held that he was wronged by his lady in 
some particular passage of their love affairs, which I take 
to be her jealousy of Lady Eich. Shakspeare's treatment 
of the matter in this sonnet goes far to identify it with the 
story just told. Suspicion has been at work, and the 
Poet tells his friend that for one like him to be suspected 
and slandered is no marvel whatever. Suspicion is the 
ornament of beauty, and is sure to be found in its near 
neighbourhood : it is the crow that flies in the upper air. 
A handsome young fellow like the Earl is sure to be the 
object of suspicion and envy. The Earl has been sus- 
pected, and the suspicion has given rise to a slander. 
Therefore the Poet treats the charge of the jealousy son- 
nets as a slander. If it had been true, it would not have 
rested on suspicion. The lady herself was not sure if her 
suspicions were true — did not know if the absent ones 
were triumphing in their treachery — and Shakspeare in 
person implies that they were not. He speaks also to 

Q 



226 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the Earl's general character on the subject ; says his young 
friend ' presents a pure unstained prime ' of life ; alludes 
to his having been assailed by a woman, and come off a 
6 victor being charged.' In the previous sonnets, as we 
saw, it was a woman who had wooed and tried to tempt 
the Earl from his mistress. But, pure and good as he 
may be, and blameless as his life has been, this is not 
enough to tie up envy. This sonnet, then, illustrates the 
story of Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy. It gives us the 
Poet's own view of the affair, together with his personal 
conclusions. Read on any theory, and looked at in any 
and every aspect, this must refute the scandalous interpre- 
tation of the preceding sonnets, which have been made to 
show that the Poet kept a mistress, and was robbed of 
her by his friend. 

With the following sonnet we may take our leave of 
the author of so fallacious a discovery, so wanton a slander, 
and say, in the words of Count. Gismond's innocent and 
avenged lady : — 

' North, South, 
East, West, I looked. The Lie was dead 
And damned, and Truth stood up instead ! ? 

SHAKSPEAEE TO THE EAEL. 

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect, 
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair, 1 
The ornament of beauty is suspect, 
A Crow that flies in Heaven's sweetest air ! 
So thou be good, slander doth but approve 
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of Time; 2 
For canker Vice the sweetest buds doth love, 
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime : 

1 In sonnet 112, it is the speaker who is this mark of slander. 

2 Steevens, in a note to this sonnet, says he has shown, on the authority 
of Ben Jonson, that ' of time ' means of the then present one. Examples of 
this occur in these sonnets, hut generally ' time ' is the old personification ; 
him of the scythe and hour-glass. It is so in sonnets 12, 15, 19, 65, 100, 116, 
123, 124, 126, and there is every reason to believe that it is in the present 
instance. 



THE SLANDER ON SOUTHAMPTON. 227 

Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days, 

Either not assailed, or victor being charged ; 

Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise, 

To tie up Envy evermore enlarged : 

If some suspect of ill masked not thy show 
Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts should'st owe. 

(70.; 



2 Q 



228 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 



DKAMATIC SONNETS. 



THE EAEL TO ELIZABETH VERNON AFTER THE 

JEALOUSY. 



Ls T the first of these two sonnets there is evidence of a 
lovers' quarrel. Something has come between them and 
put them apart for awhile. There has been a period of 
suffering, a ' sad interim.' It is but reasonable to presume 
that the coolness was caused by the jealousy of the Earl's 
mistress ; and that this is the lover's plea for a full and 
frank making up. The sonnet last quoted was a plea of 
Shakspeare's on his friend's behalf. In the present in- 
stance, the Earl pleads for himself ; he seeks for a return 
to the old pleasant intimacy ; he asks that the spirit of 
love may not be killed with a ''perpetual dulness' Let 
this 'sad interim* be like the ocean that may roll its 
world of waters between two lovers, newly affianced, who 
stand watching on opposite shores for the return of love. 
Or call it the long dreary time of winter, which makes 
summer all the more wished for and all the more wel- 
come. We shall see later on that the Earl, in sonnet 120, 
speaks of a ' night of woe ' like this, occasioned by the 
unkindness of his mistress. I doubt not that the ' sad 
interim ' and the ' night of woe ' both meet in Elizabeth 
Vernon's jealousy, and that Shakspeare wrote of the one 
cause of trouble on both occasions. In the second of these 
two sonnets the Earl goes on to protest his love and care 



A LOVER'S ANXIETY. 229 

for the lady. For her peace he is at such strife with his 
thoughts and feelings as may be found betwixt the miser 
and his wealth. One moment he is rich beyond every- 
thing as he looks at his treasure, and the next minute he 
is doubting whether a 'filching age ' may not steal it, 
whilst he is not near enough for her protection. The 
sonnet felicitously expresses the alternations of the lover's 
feelings, the sudden change from glow to gloom, the tender 
trouble that continually ripples over the smiling surface of 
his inner life : — ■ 

Sweet love, 1 renew thy force ; be it not said, 
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite, 
Which but to-day by feeding is allayed, 
To-morrow sharpen'd in his former might : 
So, love, be thou ; although to-day thou fill 
Thy hungry eyes e'en till they wink with fulness, 
To-morrow see again, and do not kill 
The spirit of love with a perpetual dulness : 
Let this sad interim, 2 like the ocean be 
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new 
Come daily to the banks, that, when they see 
Return of love, more bless'd may be the view : 
Or call it winter, which, being full of care, 
Makes summer's welcome thrice more wished, more 
rare, 

(56.) 

So are you to my thoughts as food to life, 

Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground ; 

And for the peace of you I hold such strife 

As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found ; 

Now proud as an enjoyer and anon 

Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure ; 3 

Now counting best to be with you alone, 

Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure : 

1 The l love ' here addressed is not a person, out a passion ; and it is dis- 
tinctly enough stated to be the love that precedes marriage. 

2 This ' sad interim ' is marked in the original copy by italics. 

3 ' Doubting the JHching age will steal his treasure.'' The age of Elizabeth 



230 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Sometime all full with feasting on your sight, 
And by and by clean-starved for a look ; 
Possessing or pursuing no delight 
Save what is had or must be from you took : 
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, 
Or gluttoning on all, or all away. 



(75.) 



was not a man-stealing age, so far as history records. Of necessity it must 
be a woman here spoken of, and the jealous lover is fearful lest the ( filch- 
ing age ' should rob him of his mistress by that seduction which is only too 
common. 



231 



DRAMATIC SONNETS. 



>>®4< 



ELIZABETH VERNON EEPAYS THE EARL BY A 
FLIRTATION OF HER OWN: HIS REPROACH. 



In these sonnets the Earl still pleads, but his mistress is 
determined to vex him with her wilful humours and signs 
of inconstancy. They continue the love-quarrel which, 
'as I suppose, followed the Earl's flirtation with Lady Eich. 
The lady is bent on punishing her lover, apparently, by a 
flirtation of her own. The speaker stands on the know- 
ledge of his own desert, in spite of appearances that gave 
rise to scandal. He says that if his lady shall frown on 
the defects and faults of his character, if her love shall 
have been tried to the uttermost — c cast its utmost sum ' 
— and is called to a reckoning by wiser reflections and 
warier considerations to find nothing further in his favour, 
and she shall strangely pass him by, and hardly give him 
greeting, and love shall be converted from the thing it 
once was, for reasons sufficiently grave — against that 
time he will fortify himself with the knowledge that he 
does not deserve such treatment. He admits her right to 
leave him, for he can allege no cause why she should love 
him. And if she be really disposed to make light of his 
love, and scorn his merit, he will fight on her side against 
himself, for he is best acquainted with his own weaknesses 
and the injuries which he does to himself. Such is his 



232 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

love, and so much does he belong to her, that for her 
right he will bear all wrong. Some glory in their birth, 
others in their skill, their wealth, their rich raiment. But 
all such particulars of possession he betters in ' one general 
best.' Her love is better than high birth, wealth, or 
treasures. Having her, he has the sum total of all that 
men are proud of. He is only wretched in the thought 
that she may take all this away if she takes away herself 
from him. But she may do her worst to steal herself 
away from him : she is his for life. His life is bound up 
with her love, and both will end together. Therefore he 
need not trouble himself about other wrongs when, if he 
loses her love, there is an end of all. On this fact he will 
plant himself firmly, and not let her wilful humours and 
signs of inconstancy vex him further. He is happy to 
have her love, and will be happy to die should he lose her. 
That is the position he takes. Still, his philosophy does 
not supply him with armour of proof. The darts of a 
lover's jealousy will pierce. He cannot rest in his con- 
clusions, however final. With a lover it is not only 
Heaven or Hell ; there is the intermediate Purgatorial 
state. After the magnanimity of feeling will intrude this 
mean thought ! — 

' But what's so blessed fair that fears no blot ? 
Thou may'st be false, and yet I know it not.' 

If she were false to him he could not know it, he should 
live on like a deceived husband ; her looks might be with 
him, her heart elsewhere. For Nature has so moulded 
her, and given her such sweetness and grace that, whether 
loving him or not, she must always look lovely, and her 
looks would not show her thoughts, or set the secret of 
her heart at gaze, even if both were false to him. Pray 
God it be not so, his feeling cries ! ' How like is thy 
beauty to that Apple of Eve, smiling so ripely on the out- 
side, and so rotten within, if thy sweet virtue correspond 



SELF-ABNEGATION. 233 

not to the promise of that fair face ! ' His thoughts have 
the yellow tinge of a lover's jealousy. Apparently, he is 
not yet ' paid out ' according to the lady's thinking. In 
the last of these sonnets she has not ceased to punish him. 
And, just as apparently, her artifice is so far successful. 
The lover grows more earnest, more anxious than ever. 
She has flirted enough to set the gossips gadding on the 
subject. The story has been told to him with ample ad- 
ditions and coarse comments. He concludes his reproach 
to her with a heart-felt warning : — 

Against that time — if ever that time come — 
When I shall see thee frown on my defects, 
When as thy love hath cast its utmost sum, 
Called to that audit by advised respects ; * 
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, 
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye, 
When love, converted from the thing it was, 
Shall reasons find of settled gravity- — 
Against that time do I esconce me here 
Within the knowledge of mine own desert, 
And this my hand against myself uprear, 
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part : 

To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws, 
Since why to love I can allege no cause. 

(49.) 

When thou shalt feel disposed to set me light, 
And place my merit in the eye of scorn, 
Upon thy side against myself I'll fight 
And prove thee virtuous, tho' thou art forsworn : 2 



i ( 

2 



Advised respects ;' i advised respect' occurs in ' King John/ act iv. so. 2, 
t And prove thee virtuous tho' thou art forsworn? 

Having "broken her oath or. troth-plight to be true to him. Thus in ' Venus 

and Adonis': — 

1 So do thy lips 
Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn, 
Lest she should steal a kiss, and die forsworn. 1 

Having broken her oath of virginity. With Shakspeare, forswearing is 

oath-breaking. But what oath could Southampton have taken to be true to 



234 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

With mine own weakness being best acquainted, 
Upon thy part I can set down a story 
Of faults concealed wherein I am attainted, 1 
That thou in losing me shalt win much glory : 
And I by this will be a gainer too : 
For binding all my loving thoughts on thee, 
The injuries that to myself I do, 2 
Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me — 
Such is my love, to thee I so belong 
That for thy right myself will bear all wrong. 

(88.) 

Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, 
Some in their wealth, some in their body's force, 
Some in their garments, tho' new-fangled ill, 
Some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse : 
And every Humour hath his adjunct pleasure 
"Wherein it finds a joy above the rest, 
But these particulars are not my measure, 
All these I better in one general best : 
Thy love is better than high birth to me, 3 
Eicher than wealth, prouder than garments' cost ; 
Of more delight than hawks or horses be ; 
And having thee, of all men's pride I boast ; 

Wretched in this alone, that thou may'st take 
All this away, and me most wretched make. 

(91.) 



him? The antithesis of the line is only possible when spoken to a woman. 
In a previous sonnet we have two lovers newly affianced, which I take to be 
a literal fact, not a mere image. 

1 ' I can set down a story,' &c. So Hamlet says, <I could accuse me of 
such things that it were better my mother had not borne me.' 

2 ' The injuries that to myself I do.' 

So in l King Lear' : — 

' O, Sir, to wilful men, 
The injuries that they themselves procure 
Must be their schoolmasters.' 

3 Had Shakspeare been speaking, be would not have looked down upon 
high birth whilst addressing a peer of the realm. The speaker is of 
high birth, and possesses the ' particulars ' enumerated ; but they do not fill 
the measure of his joy ; all these he betters in the best of all, his lady's love. 



A LOVER'S JEALOUSY. 235 

But do thy worst to steal thyself away, 

For term of life thou art assured mine ; 

And life no longer than thy love will stay, 

For it depends upon that love of thine ! 

Then need I not to fear the worst of wrongs, 

When in the least of them my life hath end ; 

I see a better state to me belongs 

Than that which on thy humour doth depend : 

Thou canst not vex me with inconstant mind, 

Since that my life on thy revolt doth lie ; 

0, what a happy title do I find, 

Happy to have thy love, happy to die ! 

But what's so blessed fair that fears no blot ? — 
Thou may'st be false, and yet I know it not ! 

(92) 

So shall I live, supposing thou art true, 
Like a deceived husband : so love's face 
May still seem love to me, though altered new ; 
Thy looks with me, thy heart in other place : 
For there can live no hatred in thine eye, 
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change : 
In many's looks the false heart's history 
Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange, 
But Heaven in thy creation did decree 
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell ; 
Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be, 
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell : 
How like Eve's Apple doth thy beauty grow, 
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show ! * 

(93.) 



1 So in the ' Merchant of Venice/ act i. sc. 3 : — 

' A goodly apple rotten at the heart : 
0, what a goodly outside falsehood hath.' 

In a note on this sonnet, Malone writes, ( Mr. Oldys observes, in one of his 
manuscripts, that this and the preceding sonnet seem to have been addressed 
by Shakspeare to his * beautiful wife on some suspicion of her infidelity ! ' 
Poor Mrs. Shakspeare ! The Personal Theory has not even spared her ! 



236 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame 
Which, like a canker in the fragrant Rose, 
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name ! 
0, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose ! 
That tongue that tells the story of thy days, 
Making lascivious comments on thy sport, 
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise : 
Naming thy name blesses an ill report : 
0, what a mansion have those vices got, 
Which for their habitation chose out thee ! 
Where Beauty's veil doth cover every blot, 
And all things turn to fair that eyes can see ! 

Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege ; 

The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge. 

(95.) 



237 



PERSONAL SONNETS, 



shakspeare is sad for the earl's 'harmful 

deeds: 



Although Shakspeare had, in a sonnet already quoted, 
replied to a slander on the Earl, made the best of some 
cause of quarrel betwixt the lover and his mistress, and 
spoken handsomely of his young friend's character in 
general, yet there came a time when the opposition to the 
marriage, the bickerings with Elizabeth Vernon, and the 
kindling temperament of the headstrong youth led to his 
living a somewhat loose life for a while. This we shall 
find most penitently confessed in some later sonnets when 
he comes to sue for pardon. In the present group of Per- 
sonal Sonnets, Shakspeare mourns for the wild courses 
of his friend. He would rather die than see it with his 
eyes, only his heart is so much with the Earl that he could 
not leave him in such a world alone. The first sonnet is 
somewhat general, but the others will point the meaning 
and expound the feeling. He is sad for many things that 
he sees, but most of all on account of his friend. Ah ! 
why should he live with persons who are morally infec- 
tious, he asks, and with his presence grace the society of 
the impious ? Why dwell with sinners, and give them 
the advantage of his company by allowing them to deco- 
rate their foulness with his fairness? Why should he, as 
it were, give colour to their faded complexion, freshness 
to their pallor, and himself lose more in reality than he 



238 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

can impart to others in appearance ? Every one is willing 
to give his outward beauty its meed of praise, but they 
are quick to judge of his mental gifts by these wild doings 
of his, and though their eyes look kindly on him, yet they 
smell the rankness of the weed, whilst seeing the fairness 
of the flower. The odour does not match the show, be- 
cause he has grown common ; the flower has been vul- 
garly handled. In the next sonnet, the Earl is reminded 
that the rotting lily smells far worse than the withering 
weed ; the higher the organisation the deeper the degra- 
dation. And if the beautiful flower meet with infection^ 
the basest weed is at once a worthier thing. The sonnet 
implies that the Earl is not one of those who rightly in- 
herit the graces of Heaven, husband Nature's gifts, and 
are careful stewards of their ten talents, being slow to 
temptation, and ' lords and owners of their faces ; ' on the 
contrary, he is a prodigal spendthrift, and will do great 
harm to himself because he has great power. Then, as it 
seems to me, the Poet suggests that his friend should try 
his hand at writing. Why not exercise his mind in that 
way? It would profit him and much enrich his book : — 

6 And of this book this learning may'st thou taste.' 

That is, he will find in it many reflections and moralisings 
on the subject of youth's transiency and Time's fleetness. 
Eeaders who are troubled with any lingering misgivings 
that the Poet had lived a loose life in the companionship 
of his patron and friend should pause over these sonnets 
until the mental mist passes away. The fifth, which sets 
before the young lavish nature such a sensible sober ideal 
of the wisely-ordered life and disciplined manhood, is a 
remarkable study. It has been called. 'the life without 
passion,' and supposed to contain an ironical comment on 
those whose blood is ' very snow-broth ' for coldness ! But 
it is the simple earnest of a serious man, who offers the 
faithful admonition of an elder friend. A genuine man, 



THE YOUNG EARL'S LAPSES. 239 

sagacious and sincere, and he who wrote these lines must 
have been known by the person addressed to have kept 
his own life sweet, his affections high and pure, for his 
words to have had either weight or warrant of authoritv. 
As one of the lines had appeared in a play in the year 
1596, the sonnet to which it belongs, together with the 
rest of the group, would not be written later, I think, than 
1595, or early in the year following ; but it is of course 
impossible to date every one of the sonnets : — 

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, — 

As, to behold desert a beggar born, 

And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity. 

And purest faith unhappily forsworn, 

And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, 

And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, 

And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, 

And strength by limping sway disabled, 

And Art made tongue-tied by Authority, 

And Folly, doctor-like, controlling Skill, 

And simple truth, miscalled simplicity, 

And captive Grood attending captain 111 : 

Tired with all these, from these I would be gone, 
Save that to die, I leave my Love alone ! 

(66.) 

Ah ! wherefore with infection should he live, 1 
And with his presence grace impiety, 
That Sin by him advantage should achieve, 
And lace itself with his society ? 
Why should false painting imitate his cheek, 
And steal dead seeming of his living hue ? 
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek 
Eoses of shadow, since his rose is true ? 
Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is, 
Beggared of blood to blush thro' lively veins ? 

' Ah, wherefore with infection should he live ? ' 
In sonnet 111, it is the speaker who offers to drink ' potions of Eysell ; 
because of his ' strong infection? 



240 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

For she hath no exchequer now but his, 

And, proud of many, lives upon his gains : 

! him she stores, to show what wealth she had 
In days long since, before these last so bad. 

(67.) 

Thus is his cheek the map of days out-worn, 

When Beauty lived and died as flowers do now, 

Before these bastard signs of fair were borne, 

Or durst inhabit on a living brow ; 

Before the golden tresses of the dead, 

The right of sepulchres, were shorn away 

To live a second life on second head, 

E'er Beauty's dead fleece made another gay : 

In him those holy antique hours are seen, 

Without all ornament, itself 1 and true, 

Making no summer of another's green, 

Eobbing no old to dress his beauty new ; 

And him as for a map doth Nature store, 
To show false Art what beauty was of yore ! 

(68.) 

1 ' Without all ornament itself and true.' Surely we ought to read 
i himself and true,' says Malone. Surely not : If the eye be lifted one half 
inch beyond the nose, it will perceive that the ' Beauty ' of the 2nd and 8th 
lines governs the itself of the 10th. The Poet means Beauty, 'simple, of itself/ 
as was FalstafFs sack ! 

N.B. — A like case occurs in the ' Tempest,' and, if I do not greatly err, a 
similar look backward will tend to simplify a perplexing passage : — 

' My sweet mistress 

Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness 

Had ne'er like executor ! I forget — 

But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours — 

Most busiless when I do it.' 
Here the labours are referred to parenthetically: the previous 'work ' is the 
' it ' of the last line. Ferdinand says, for his part he forgets, not only the 
baseness of his work, but the work altogether ; is only reminded of it by 
these sweet thoughts that will come and perforce refresh his labours. He 
is least occupied with the work, least engaged in it as a matter of business, 
most unbusied by it, or most busiless whilst doing it, because his thoughts 
are with her who thus turns his consciousness into comforting. The subtle, 
dreamy lover-like beauty of his ' I forget ' — he only thinking parenthetically , 
and by reflex from his mistress even of how the labour is lost in the love ! — 
is one of the poet's rarest effects. So rare and fine is it that the meaning — 
like the smitten harp -string— is almost rapt from sight to pass away in sound. 



' NOBLESSE OBLIGE.' 241 

Those parts of thee that the world's eye doth view 
Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend : 
All tongues — the voice of souls — give thee that due, 
Uttering bare truth, even so as foes commend : 
Thine outward thus with outward praise is crown'd ; 
But those same tongues that give thee so thine own, 
In other accents do this praise confound, 
By seeing farther than the eye hath shown : 
They look into the beauty of thy mind, 
And that in guess they measure by thy deeds ; l 
Then (churls) their thoughts, altho' their eyes were kind, 
To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds ! 
But why thy odour matcheth not thy show, 
The solve is this — that thou dost common grow. 2 

(69.) 

They that have power to hurt and will do none. 
That do not do the thing they most do show, 
Who moving others are themselves as stone, 
Unmoved, cold, arid to temptation slow ; 
They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces 
And husband Nature's riches from expense ; 
They are the lords and owners of their faces, 
Others but stewards of their excellence : 
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, 
Though to itself it only live and die ; 
But if that flower with base infection meet, 
The basest weed outbraves his dignity ! 

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds ; 

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. 

(94.) 

Thy Glass will show thee how thy beauties wear, 
Thy Dial how the precious minutes waste; 
The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear, 
And of this Book this learning may'st thou taste ! 

1 ' Tlxy deeds.'' In Sonnet 111, it is the speaker who bewails his 'harmful 
deeds.'' 

2 ' Thou dost common grow? In Sonnet 112 ; the speaker has been the 
mark of common scandal. 

B 



242 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

The wrinkles which thy Glass will truly show 
Of mouthed graves will give thee memory ; 
Thou by thy Dial's shady stealth may'st know 
Time's thievish progress to eternity : 
Look, what thy memory cannot contain 
Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find 
Those children nursed — delivered from thy brain — 
To take a new acquaintance of thy mind : 
These offices, so oft as thou wilt look, 
Shall profit thee, and much enrich thy Book. 

(77.) 



243 



DRAMATIC SONNETS, 

1597—8. 



A FAEEWELL OF THE EAEL'S TO ELIZABETH 
VERNON. 



It has now come to a parting in downright earnest with 
Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon. The lover speaks as 
one who has an ' honourable grief lodged here, that burns 
worse than tears can drown.' She is too dear for him to 
possess. He has called her his for awhile, because she 
gave herself to him, either not knowing her worth or his 
unworthiness. She gave herself away upon a mistake, a 
misconception, his patent having been granted in error ; 
and her better judgment recalls the gift. Farewell ! What- 
soever reason she may assign for this course, he will sup- 
port it, and make no defence on his own behalf. She 
cannot disgrace him half so badly, whatever excuse she 
may put forth for this ' desired change,' as he will disgrace 
himself. Knowing her will, he will not claim her ac- 
quaintance, but walk no more in the old accustomed 
meeting- places ; and should they meet by chance, he will 
look strange, see her as though he saw her not. He will 
not name her name lest he — ' too much profane ' — should 
soil it, and very possibly tell of their acquaintanceship. 
He will fight against himself in every way for her ; he* 
must never love him whom she hates. ' Then hate me 

R 2 



244 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

when thou wilt ; let the worst come, if ever, now, whilst 
the world is bent upon crossing my deeds. Join with the 
spite of Fortune, make me bow all at once. Do not wait 
till I have surmounted my present sorrow. Give not a 
night of sighs, a morrow of weeping, to lengthen out that 
which you purpose doing. Do not come with the greater 
trial when other petty griefs have wreaked their worst 
upon me, but in the onset come and let me taste the worst 
of Fortune's might at one blow. Then — 

6 Other strains of woe, which now seem woe, 
•Compared with loss of thee will not seem so.' 

This parting I conjecture to have occurred, or been thus 
spoken of, after the disgraceful affair in Court, which is 
chronicled by Eowland White. On the 19th of January, 
1598 — to repeat the old gossip's words — he writes to Sir 
Kobert Sidney : ' I hard of some unkindness should be 
between 3000 (the No. in his cypher for Southampton) 
and his Mistress, occasioned by some report of Mr. Ambrose 
Willoughby. 3000 called hym to an account for yt, but 
the matter was made knowen to my Lord of Essex, and my 
Lord Chamberlain, who had them in Examinacion ; what 
the cause is I could not learne, for yt was but new ; but 
/ see 3000 full of discontentments. 1 Two days later he 
records that Southampton was playing a game of cards 
called Primero with Ealeigh and some other courtiers in 
the presence-chamber. They continued their game after 
the Queen had retired to rest. Ambrose Willoughby, the 
officer in waiting, warned them that it was time to depart. 
Ealeigh obeyed ; but when Willoughby threatened to call 
in the guard and pull down the board, Southampton took 
offence and would not go. Words ensued, and a scuffle 
followed ; blows were exchanged, and Willoughby tore 
out some of Southampton's hair. When the Queen heard 
of the affair next morning, she thanked Willoughby for his 
part in it, and said, probably with a fierce glance at one 



< UNKINDNESS ' BETWEEN THE EARL AND HIS MISTRESS. 245 

of Southampton's friends, ' he should have sent the Earl 
to the porter's lodge to see who durst have fetched him out' 
The Queen ordered Southampton to absent himself from 
the Court. He was again in disgrace, with Mistress Vernon 
as a grieved looker-on. Other circumstances tend to cor- 
roborate my view, that this was the occasion on which the 
following sonnets were written. The mental condition of 
Elizabeth Vernon, as described in White's letters, affords 
good evidence. The Earl proposed leaving England for 
Paris, to offer his sword to Henry IV. of France. And 
c his fair Mistress doth wash her fairest face with too many 
tears.' Also the allusions in the third sonnet identify the 
time as being after the Earl's return from the ' Island 
Voyage' in October 1597, when he received frowns in- 
stead of thanks for what he had done, and found the world 
bent upon crossing his deeds ; the ' spite of Fortune ' more 
bitter than ever, because he had dared to pursue and sink 
one of the enemy's vessels without Monson's orders : — 

Farewell ! thou art too dear for my possessing, 

And like enough thou know'st thy estimate ; 

The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing ; 

My bonds in thee are all determinate : 

For how do I hold thee, but by thy granting ? 

And for that riches where is my deserving ? 

The cause of this fair gift to me is wanting, 

And so my patent back again is swerving : 

Thyself thou gav'st, thy own worth then not knowing, 

Or me, to whom thou gav'st it, else mistaking ; 

So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, 

Comes home again, on better judgment making: 

Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth natter ; 

In sleep a king, but waking, no such matter. 

(87.) 

Say that thou did'st forsake me for some fault, 
And I will comment upon that offence : 
Speak of my lameness and I straight will halt, 
Against thy reasons making no defence : 



246 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Thou canst not, Love, disgrace me half so ill, 
To set a form upon desired change, 1 
As I'll myself disgrace ; knowing thy will, 
I will acquaintance strangle and look strange ; 
Be absent from thy walks, and in my tongue, 
Thy sweet beloved name no more shall dwell, 
Lest I, too much profane, should do it wrong 
And haply of our old acquaintance tell : 

For thee against myself I'll vow debate, 

For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate. 

(89.) 

Then hate me when thou wilt ; if ever, now ; 

Now, while the world is bent my deeds to cross, 

Join with the spite of Fortune, make me bow, 

And do not drop in for an after-loss : 

Ah ! do not, when my heart hath 'scaped this sorrow, 

Come in the rearward of a conquered woe : 

Give not a windy night a rainy morrow, 

To linger out a purposed overthrow ! 

If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last 

When other petty griefs have done their spite, 

But in the onset come ; so shall I taste 

At first the very worst of Fortune's might ; 

And other strains of woe which now seem woe, 
Compared with loss of thee will not seem so. 

(90.) 



1 To set a form upon desired change.' So in ' King John ' : — 
1 To set a form upon that indigest 
Which he hath left so shapeless and so rude.' 



247 



DRAMATIC SONNETS. 

1598. 



THE EARL TO ELIZABETH VERNON AFTER HIS 

ABSENCE, 



The last group has in it the pain of parting ; the present, 
the rapture of return. Both are essentially amatory, and 
this is full of the flowery tenderness of the grand passion. 
How could any one think that the greatest of all drama- 
tists would have lavished such imagery on the feeling 
of man for man, devoted this dalliance with all the choice 
beauties of external nature as the beloved's shadow and 
looked upon the frailest flowers as the ' figures of delight/ 
drawn after the pattern of a man ? As though our Poet 
did not know the difference betwixt courting a man and 
wooing a woman! As though he would have charged 
the Violet, his own darling, with stealing its sweetness 
from a man's breath, and its purple pride from the blood 
of a man's veins ! Why, he had, in sonnet 21 (p. 132) pro- 
tested most strenuously against any such interpretation. 
He says it is not with him as with those who make a 
4 couplement of proud compare, 
With April's first-born flowers and all things rare,' 

when writing to his friend in person. It is Shakspearian 
sacrilege to suppose that the Poet ever condemned the 
lily for daring to emulate the whiteness of a warrior's 



248 SHAKSPEABE'S SONNETS. 

hand. It is an insult offered to the ' white wonder of 
dear Juliet's hand,' that Borneo adored ; the ' snow- 
white hand of the most beauteous Lady Bosaline,' that 
my Lord Biron addressed ; the ' princess of pure white ' 
saluted by Demetrius ; the ' white hand of Kosalind,' 
by which Orlando swore ; the ' white hand of a lady ' 
that Thyreus was soundly whipped for kissing ; the white 
hand of Perdita that Morizel took, ' as soft as dove's 
down and as white as it,' and Cressid's hand, 4 in whose 
comparison all whites are ink.' This was a grace most 
jealously preserved for the dainty hands of his women, 
not thrown away on his fighting men ! 

The present return of the Earl I conjecture to be from 
the journey which followed the parting in the last group. 
The speaker says how like a winter has his absence been, 
and yet it was the time of flowers and of fruit, summer 
and autumn all the while. Southampton left England 
late in February of the year, and came home for good in 
November. He paid a hasty secret visit in August to 
marry Elizabeth Vernon, but the absence altogether cor- 
responds to the one herein described. The third sonnet 
contains fifteen lines. A variation which suggests that 
some of the sonnets ran on as stanzas in a poem, and 
that in the present instance this continuity was marked by 
an extra fine. 

How like a winter hath my absence been 
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year ! 
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, 
What old December's bareness everywhere ! 
And yet this time removed l was summer's time ; 
The teeming autumn big with rich increase, 
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, 
Like widowed wombs after their lords' decease : 

1 ' This time removed/ i.e., the time while I was remote from you. So in 
sonnet 116, Sliakspeare calls the Earl the ' Remover ' who has wandered far 
awav from his Mistress. 



-r 



THE FLOWER OF FLOWERS. 249 

Yet this abundant issue seemed to me 

But hope of orphans and unfathered fruit : 

For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, 

And, thou away, the very birds are mute — 
Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer 
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near. 

(97.) 

From you I have been absent in the spring, 

When proud pied April, dressed in all his trim, 

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, 

That heavy Saturn laught and leapt with him : 

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 

Of different flowers in odour and in hue, 

Could make me any summer's story tell, 

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew : 

Nor did I wonder at the lily's white, 

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ; 

They were but sweet, but figures of delight, 

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those ! 

Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away, 
As with your shadow I with these did play. 

The forward Violet thus did I chide : — 

' Siveet thief I ivhence didst thou steal thy svjeet that 

smells 
If not from my Love's breath? the purple pride 
Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dtvells, 
In my Love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed /' 
The lily I condemned for thy hand, 
And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair ; l 
The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, 
One blushing shame, another white despair ; 



1 The likeness indicated by this comparison must be one of shape, not of 
colour. The poet does not say the flower of the marjoram, which is purple 
and white. Readers may seek in vain for any resemblance of the hair to 
marjoram, shape or colour, in the portraits of Southampton and Herbert. 



250 SHAKSPEABE'S SONNETS. 

A third, nor red nor white, had stolen of both 
And to his robbery had annexed thy breath ; 
But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth, 
A vengeful canker ate him up to death ! 

More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, 
But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee. 

o 



251 



PEESONAL SONNETS. 

1598—9. 



■ ¥- 



SHAKSPEAKE TO THE EAKL AFTEE SOME TIME 
OF SILENCE. 



In the hundredth sonnet, which, in Thorpe's collection, 
follows the group on absence, there is curious proof of an 
absence of the person addressed, and a silence on the part 
of the speaker. Yet, the person who has been away 
cannot have been Shakspeare, or the absence would be the 
cause of the silence ! The speaker in the previous sonnets 
says nothing could make him ' any summer's story tell,' 
whereas the speaker in this sonnet has been telling stories ; 
has been at work on some worthless old story or other, 
turning it into a play, during the absence of the previous 
speaker. Hard work, in his friend's absence, is the cause 
why he has forgotten so long to write of the Earl, and not 
his own absence from England. The length of the absence 
also is opposed to the idea of it being Shakspeare who was 
away from his theatre all through the spring, summer and 
autumn ! These sonnets show plainly that the Earl, who 
was the speaker in the preceding three sonnets, has now 
returned from abroad, and the Poet stirs up his muse on 
the subject of the Earl's sonnets. Beturn, forgetful muse, 
he says, and redeem the time that has been spent so idly 



252 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

in darkening thy power to lend base subjects light. Sing 
to the ear that does esteem thy lays, and gives thy pen 
both skill and argument. Eise and see if, during his 
absence, Time has engraven any wrinkle in his face. If so 
be thou the satirist of Time's power, and make his spoils 
despised, by retouching with tints of immortal youth this 
portrait that shall be hung up beyond the reach of decay. 
It will be seen that Shakspeare speaks of his friend with 
a lighter heart, and once more exalts his virtues, truth and 
constancy. The meaning of this may be found in the 
fact that the Earl has now publicly crowned the secret 
sovereign of his heart ; he has at last married Elizabeth 
Vernon. This celebration of the Earl's constancy and truth 
is not in relation to the Poet, but to the Earl's Mistress and 
his marriage. He is ; constant in a wondrous excellence,' 
and therefore Shakspeare's verse is still confined to the 
praise of that constancy. These sonnets tell us that the 
Earl and his love were yet the Poet's only argument. Up 
to the present time he was writing to him and of him. 

Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget 'st. so long 

To speak of that which gives thee all thy might ? 

Spend" st thou thy fury on some worthless song 

Darkening thy power to lend base subjects light? 

Return, forgetful Muse, and straight redeem 

In gentle numbers time so idly spent; 1 

Sing to the ear that doth thy lays esteem 

And gives thy pen both skill and argument ! 

Rise, restive. Muse, my Love's sweet face survey, 

If Time have any wrinkle graven there ; 

If any, be a satire to decay, 

And make Time's spoils despised everywhere ! 

Give my Love fame faster than Time wastes life : 
So thou prevent'st his sc} 7 the and crooked knife. 

(100.) 

1 This lost time was redeemed not only by the writing of this group of 
personal sonnets, but also the dramatic series that follows them. 



THE POET'S WELCOME HOME TO HIS FRIEND. 253 

truant Muse, what shall be thy amends 
For thy neglect of truth in beauty dyed ? 
Both truth and beauty on my Love depends ; 
So dost thou too, and therein dignified : 
Make answer, Muse ! wilt thou not haply say, 
' Truth needs no colour with his colour fixed; 
Beauty no 'pencil, beauty's truth to lay : 
But best is best if never intermixed f ' 
Because he needs no praise, wilt thou be dumb ? 
Excuse not silence so ; for it lies in thee 

To make him much outlive a gilded tomb, 

And to be praised of ages yet to be ! 

Then do thy office, Muse ; I teach thee how 
To make him seem long hence as he is now. 

(101.) 

My love is strengthened, tho' more weak in seeming ; 

1 love not less, tho' less the show appear ; 
That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming 
The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere ! 
Our love was new and then but in the spring 
When I was wont to greet it with my lays, 

As Philomel in summer's front doth sing 
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days : 
Not that the summer is less pleasant now 
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night, 
But that wild music burthens every bough 
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight ! 
Therefore like her, I sometime hold my tongue, 
Because I would not dull you with my song. 

(102.) 

Alack ! what poverty my Muse brings forth, 
That having such a scope to show her pride, 
The argument, all bare, is of more worth 
Than when it hath my added praise beside : 
blame me not if I no more can write ! 
Look in your glass, and there appears a face 
That over-goes my blunt invention quite, 
Dulling my lines and doing me disgrace ! 



254 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Were it not sinful then, striving to mend, 

To rnar the subject that before was well ? 

For to no other pass rny verses tend 

Than of your graces and your gifts to tell ; 

And more, much more, than in my verse can sit 
Your own glass shows you when you look in it. 

(103.) 

Why is my verse so barren of new pride, 

So far from variation, or quick change ? 

Why, with the time, do I not glance aside 

To new-found methods and to compounds strange ? 

Why write I still all one, ever the same, 

And keep invention in a noted weed, 

That every word doth almost tell my name, 

Showing their birth, and whence they did proceed ? 

know, sweet Love, I always write of you, 
And you and love are still my argument ; 
So all my best is dressing old words new, 
Spending again what is already spent : 

For as the sun is daily new and old, 
So is my love still telling what is told. 

(76.) 

What's in the brain that ink may character 
Which hath not figured to thee my true spirit ? 
What's new to speak, what new to register, 1 
That may express my love, or thy dear merit ? 
Nothing, sweet boy ! but yet like prayers divine, 

1 must each day say o'er the very same ; 
Counting no old thing old, thou mine, I thine, 
Even as when first I hallowed thy fair name ! 
So that eternal love in love's fresh case 
Weighs not the dust and injury of age, 

Nor gives to necessary wrinkles place, 

But makes antiquity for aye his page, 

Finding the first conceit of love there bred, 
Where time and outward form would show it dead. 

(108.) 

1 'What new to register.' The Quarto reads, l What now to register,' 
but the opposition intended is, I think, between speaking and writing, and 
' new ' is the more immediately applicable to registering. Malone first made 
the change. 



THE EARL'S CONSTANCY IN LOVE. 255 

Let not my love be called idolatry, 

Nor my beloved as an idol show, 

Since all alike my songs and praises be 

To one, of one, still such and ever so : 

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, 

Still constant in a wondrous excellence ; 

Therefore my verse to constancy confined. 

One thing expressing, leaves out difference : 

Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument, 

Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words ; 

And in this change is my invention spent, 

Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords ! 
Fair, kind, and true, have often lived alone, 
Which three, till now, never kept seat in one. 

(105.) 



256 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



DRAMATIC SONNETS, 

1598—9. 



THE EAEL TO ELIZABETH YEENON— THEIE FINAL 
RECONCILIATION: WITH SHAKSPEARE'S SONNET 
ON THEIE MARRIAGE. 



Whatsoever Shakspeare intended to put into the sonnets 
is there, and may be found in them. Whatsoever cha- 
racter he meant to pourtray will be there depicted. Such 
was the constitution of his mind that his work is sure to 
be dramatically true ; no matter what the subject may be. 
In the sonnets that are personal, there will be found 
nothing opposed to what we know, and have reason to 
believe, of the Poet's character. Nothing but what is 
perfectly compatible with that wise prudence, careful 
forethought, uprightness of dealing, stability of spirit, 
contentedness with his own lot, proverbial sweetness and 
loveableness of disposition which we know, not by con- 
jecture, but because his possession of these virtues is the 
most amply attested fact of his life. Moreover, the per- 
sonal sonnets always illustrate that modesty of his nature 
which was great as was his genius. But, in this group of 
sonnets, the character delineated is the exact opposite in 
every respect to that of Shakspeare ; separated from his 
by a difference the most profound. This is a youth speak- 
ing — as in sonnet the 2nd — whereas Shakspeare continually 
harps on his riper age, or, as Ave have read it, his elder 
brotherhood to the youth who is his friend. And this 



SOUTHAMPTON'S CHARACTERISTICS. 257 

youth, who is the speaker here, has been headstrong and 
wilful, imprudent and thoughtless ; unstable as wind and 
wave, and easily made the sport of both ; he is choleric 
and quickly stirred to breaking out and flying off at 
random. Again and again has he given pain to those 
that loved him most, who have had to turn from his 
doings with averted eyes. Again and again has he left 
the beloved, and gone away as far as wind and wave 
would carry him. He has heedlessly done things which 
have made him the mark of scandal — 

' A fixed figure of the time, 1 for Scorn 
To point his slow umnoving finger at;' 

made a fool of himself, as we say, and as he also says, 
publicly, to the view ; ' gored his own thoughts ' and made 
the heart of others bleed for him. He has been forgetful 
of that ' dearest love ' to which ' all bonds' draw him closer 
and tie him tighter day by day ; he has been wanting in 
those grateful offices of affection wherein he ought to have 
repaid the ' great deserts ' of the person addressed. 

These sonnets are very dramatic ; intensely personal to 
the speaker ; the feeling goes deep enough to carry the 
writer most near to nature, therefore they are certain to be 
representatively true. They are pathetic with a passionate 
pleading ; filled with real confessions ; self-criminating, and 
quick with repentance. But they are not true to the nature 
of our Poet, they have no touch of kinship, no feature 
of likeness to him. They are, I repeat, in all respects the 
precise opposite to what we know of Shakspeare, and to all 
that he says of himself, or others say of him. If ever there 
was a soul of ripe serenity and capacious calm, of sweet 
and large affections, wise orderliness of life, and an imagina- 
tion that had the deep stillness of brooding love, it was the 
soul of Shakspeare. His was not a mind to be troubled 

1 Surely this is the true reading of the above two lines— the 'of' and 
1 for ' having changed places ? Othello cannot mean that he is made into a 
clock or a dial, but the laughing-stock of the time ? 

S 



258 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

and tossed by every breeze that blew, and billow that 
broke ; not a temperament to be ever in restless eddy and 
ebb and flow ; not a nature that was fussy or fretful, but 
steady and deep ; of massive mould, majestic motion and 
smiling spaciousness. He was a man who could possess 
his soul in patience, and silently bide his time ; who did 
not babble of his discontents with either tongue or pen. 

Then, if Southampton be the friend who is addressed 
when Shakspeare speaks personally, his character should 
be to some extent reflected from Shakspeare's words ; we 
should at least see his features, although in miniature, in 
Shakspeare's eyes. We know his character. It can be traced 
quite distinctly on the historic page. He was a brave and 
bounteous peer. A noble of nature's own making, munifi- 
cent, chivalrous, full of warlike and other fire. But he was 
one of those who will have the flash and outbreak of the 
passionate mind ; and when stirred, the quick fire was apt 
to leap out into a world of dancing sparks. He was quick 
and sudden in quarrel ; his hand flew as swiftly to his 
swordhilt as the hot blood to his face ; lacking in prudence 
and patience, and unstable in all things but his ardent 
friendships. Even these he must have tried sorely. His 
mounting valour was of the restless irrepressive kind 
which, if it cannot find vent in battles abroad, is likely to 
break out in broils at home. He was easily swayed, and 
frequently swerved aside by the continual cross-currents 
of his wilful wanton blood ; one of the chosen friends 
and kindred spirits of the madcap and feather-triumph 
Earl of Essex ! But he was also one of those generous, 
self-forgetting foolish souls whose vices are often more 
amiable than some people's virtues. All this we may read 
in the records of the time. All this we may gather from 
the sonnets which are addressed to him. And all this is 
figured in the liveliest form and colour in those sonnets 
which I say are spoken by the Earl of Southampton. 
These paint the past history of the speaker, and they 



THE PEE SON ADDRESSED IS A LADY. 259 

render the Earl's character, actions, quarrels, wanderings, 
to the life. But this is not the character of the person 
here addressed, whoever the speaker may be, therefore 
the person here addressed cannot be the Earl of South- 
ampton. This person is the quiet centre of the cyclone 
of emotions, exclamations, pleadings, protestations. This 
person is the stay-at-home — the ' home of love ' from 
which the other has so often ranged. This person sits 
enthroned God-like in love, ' enskied and sainted,' high 
over the region of storm and strife, the wild whirl of re- 
pentant words, having the prerogative to look down with 
sad calm eyes ; the regal right to forgive ! The person 
here addressed is of such purity and goodness that the 
speaker feels he needs to be disinfected before he can come 
near. This cannot be Southampton, as we know, by his 
character and conduct. And if Southampton be not the 
person addressed then it follows that Shakspeare is not 
the speaker ; this we know likewise from his character and 
conduct. He was a man too wise and prudent to have 
done the foolish things that are here confessed. His 
was : — 

6 The soul that gathers wealth in still repose, 
Not losing all that floats in overflows/ 

but resting with a large content in the quiet brimfulness 
of its force. His mind was too steadfastly anchored in the 
firm ground of a stable character, for him to be con- 
tinually going to and fro. He was not the wanderer over 
the world, ranging time after time from his ' home of love ' 
far as fortune would let him ; hoisting sail to every wind 
that blew ; turning and tossing as it were in the distrac- 
tion of a ; madding fever ' ; listening to the song of the 
syrens ; not bound on board with ears safely stopped, 
but landing to be flattered and fooled by their treacherous 
tears. This speaker is a traveller who has often been 
amongst foreigners (' unknown minds ') which Shakspeare 
certainly was not — even if he ever went out of England 

s 2 



260 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

at all — any more than he could have been the man who 
had so blamefully looked ' on truth askance and strangely ' 
to wilfully roam about the world, and make acquaintance 
with all the error he could meet. And if the supposed 
facts had been true ; if his had been the nature to have 
these many mournful breakings-out and nyings-off at 
random ; if his errors and wilfulness had been so grievous 
to his friends ; if his light love had been this plaything, 
this weather-cock of change ; if he had so shamefully, 
so disgracefully trampled his acknowledged sacred obliga- 
tions under foot, and proved so faithless to his professed 
friendship ; if he had committed these ' wretched errors ' 
of the heart ; why, then, the arguments would be all 
fatally false. For it is not possible that Shakspeare should 
confess all these sins and shames on his part, and afterwards 
urge that all these ' worse essays ' were merely made to 
try the Earl's affection, and prove him to be the c best of 
love;' that all the 'blenches' and ungratefulness and 
wanton inconstancy were only meant to test the virtue 
and constancy of the Earl's friendship. He could not 
urge that he had turned to vicious and immoral courses 
on purpose to purge his stomach of the Earl's ' sweetness,' 
on which he had overfed, and urge that the true way of 
growing healthier was to become diseased. He could not 
wilfully wander away from this dear friend — leave ' for 
nothing ' all his ' sum of good ' and then ask him to 
quarrel with Fortune as the cause of his roving on account 
of his being a player or manager of a theatre, whose 
place and duty were to keep quietly at home and work 
steadily ; as we know Shakspeare did. He could not 
plead that these sad experiences had given his heart 
another youth, for the one that had been let run to waste ; 
he who was nearly ten years older than the Earl, and 
always gives him the utmost benefit of the difference in 
their years and personal appearance. All such excuses 
from such a man who had been such a sinner would be 



REASONS WHY THE POET IS NOT THE SPEAKER. 2G1 

insultingly absurd. And it is most grossly improbable 
that Shakspeare should have spoken to his noble friend, as 
in sonnet 120, and had to regret that he had not been as 
generous or quick in forgiveness as that friend had been 
to him on a previous occasion, when we remember the 
modesty of the man. Still more gross is the idea that 
Shakspeare should offer to his patron and dear friend the 
worn-out remnant of his affections, like the broken-down 
rake in Burns's poem, who, having foundered his horse 
among harlots, ' gave the auld nag to the Lord.' Telling 
him that he would ' never more grind his appetite on 
newer proof, to try an older friend. ' For, if Shakspeare 
were speaking according to the personal interpretation, 
that word could have but one meaning. And it is im- 
possible to suppose that our Poet, who was so alive to all 
natural proprieties, could use it in addressing a male 
friend. Equally impossible is it to think of Shakspeare, 
the man of staid habit and grave masculine morality ; the 
husband of good repute and the father of a family ; the 
shrewd man of the world, conversant with men and affairs ; 
the man who speaks of himself not only as ripe in years, 
but somewhat aged before his time ; who, when he catches 
a glimpse of his own face, does so with an arch gravity or 
a iocose remark on the signs of age and the wear and 
tear of life ; who is weather-beaten, chapped and tan- 
ned ; in sonnet 73, — it is impossible that this man, of 
sober soul and grave wise speech, should afterwards be 
found pleading with his boy-friend that the cause of his 
lapses and frailties is that sportive wild blood of his which 
will have its frisky leaps and lavoltos, and asking, with an 
almost infantile innocence, 4 why should false adulterate 
eyes ' give it salutation ? Why should they shoot their 
wicked lightnings to melt the sword of his naturally 
virtuous soul in its sheath, leaving him so unarmed and 
helpless to the wicked one who wants to take advantage 
of his tender youth? This is ineffably foolish to any 



262 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

one who is at all grounded in the qualities of Shaks- 
peare's character, or acquainted with such of the son- 
nets as are explicitly personal. Bad as they have tried 
to make him, Shakspeare did not think adultery good, nor 
lust altogether admirable — if we may trust the 129th 
sonnet, which is somewhat emphatic on the point and very 
much to our purpose. Yet such a theory, so blindly 
misleading and perniciously false, has been accepted, or 
allowed to pass almost unchallenged, by men who profess 
to believe in Shakspeare ! 

One of these sonnets has been held to indicate Shak- 
speare's disgust at his player's life. The image being 
drawn from the stage gives some countenance to this view. 
But it is not fitted to the relationship of poet and patron, 
and it is quite opposed to all that we learn of Shakspeare's 
character. It is not true that he had gone here and there 
and everywhere to make a fool of himself, when he was 
quietly getting a living for his wife and family in an up- 
right, honest, prudent way. Nor could he with any the 
least propriety speak of making a fool of himself on the 
stage, which was the meeting-place of himself and the 
Earl ; the fount of Shakspeare's honour, the spring of 
his good fortune ; the known delight of Southampton, 
who often spent his time in doing nothing but going 
fc> plays. JSTor have we ever heard of any "harmfid 
deeds,' or doings of Shakspeare, occasioned in conse- 
quence of his connexion with the stage. Nor do we see 
how his name could be branded, or ' receive a brand? from 
his connexion with the theatre, or from his acts in con- 
sequence of his being a player. What name ? He had 
no name apart from the theatre, and the friendships it had 
brought him. His name was created there. He had 
no higher standard of appeal. He had not stooped to 
authorship, or the player's life. His living depended on 
the theatre ; he met and made his friends at the theatre ; 
he was making his fortune by the theatre ; how then 



SIIAKSPEARE'S < WELL-CONTENTED DAY.' 203 

should he exclaim against the theatre ? How could he 
receive a brand on his name/Ww* the theatre ? Supposing 
him to have had a great dislike to the life and work, it 
.would have been perfectly out of place, unnatural, and 
inartistic, to have thus expressed it point-blank to the 
generous friend who had exalted the ' poor player ' and 
overleaped the player's life and lot and character, to shake 
him by the hand, and make him his bosom friend, however 
much the world might have looked down upon him ! But 
I altogether doubt that he had any such dislike to his lot. 
I believe he neither pined in private nor complained in 
public, but that his thrift and prosperity were in great 
measure the result of content. John Davies might and 
did regret that Fortune had not dealt better by Shakspeare 
than in making him a player and playwright : but even 
he held that the stage only stained ' pure and gentle blood,' 
of which our Poet was not, although ' generous in mind 
and mood,' and one that ' sowed honestly for others to 
reap.' l Ben Jonson might kick against the ' loathed 
stage,' and Marston complain, but Shakspeare's was a 
career of triumph ; he was borne from the beginning on 
a full tide of prosperity ; the stage gave him that which 
he so obviously valued, worldly good fortune, He could 
not have been querulously decrying that success which his 
contemporaries were envying so much. Moreover, he was 
at heart a player, and enjoyed the pastime ; this is ap- 
parent in his works, and according to evidence in sonnet 
32 (p. 133), he lived a ' well-contented day.' Therefore he 
could not despise the art in which he delighted, and which 
was bringing him name, friends, and fortune. We have no 
proof whatever that he felt degraded by treading the stage, 
and we have proof that he did not forget or overlook his 
old theatre friends. He considered himself their 'fellow ' in 
1616, when he remembered them in his will. A kindly 
thought, and just like him, but quite opposed to the personal 

1 Scourge of Folly. 



264 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

interpretation of the sonnet. Besides which, if he had 
looked upon himself as the victim of Fortune, if she were 
responsible for his being a player, what motive would he 
have for self-reproach ? Why should he cry ' Alas ! ' and 
ask to be pitied, and call for some moral disinfecting fluid, 
no matter how bitter, and seek to do ' double penance ' 
when he was honestly getting his living according to the 
lot which had befallen him ? He could not be the help- 
less victim of Fortune, and the headstrong cause of his 
own misfortune ; and that is the mixture of character im- 
plied ! There is a strong sense of personal wilfulness in 
doing ' harmful deeds.' Do you ' o'ergreen my bad,' and 
pity me, and ' wish I were renewed,' not merely my means 
of living ! 

I have no doubt that Shakspeare had been far more 
intent on getting his theatre renewed, and if the Earl, as 
has been suggested, gave our Poet assistance towards the 
building of the ' Globe ' on Bankside, the personal interpre- 
tation of this sonnet would afford a singular comment on 
the Earl's generosity and Shakspeare's gratitude. Our 
Poet, in all likelihood, was thinking how tolerably well 
Fortune had so far provided for his life. And we may 
consider it pretty certain that his name never did ' receive 
a brand ' on account of his ' public manners ' bred in him 
through being a player. His brow never was branded by 
public scandal. And so evidently public are the parson, 
the acts, the scandal of these sonnets, that we must have 
heard of them had they been Shakspeare's, just as we 
hear of the loose doings of Marlowe, Green, and the lesser 
men. It is no answer to my argument for any one to urge 
that Shakspeare may have done this or the other privately, 
and we not have heard of it. These are not private mat- 
ters. It is no secret confession of hidden frailty. The 
subject is notorious; the scandal is public; and if 
Shakspeare were speaking, he would have done something 
for all the world to see branded on his brow.- If his 



THE POET XOT A < PUBLIC ' MAN. 265 

manners had been such as to warrant the tone of these 
sonnets, his contemporaries must have seen them, and we 
should have heard of them. 

There is one expression in this sonnet which has been 
identified as positively personal, because the speaker says 
that Fortune did not better for his life provide than public 
means. But that is the result of a preconceived hypo- 
thesis. It never seems to have been questioned whether 
a player of Elizabeth's time would speak of living by 
' public means,' when the highest thing aimed at by the 
players was private patronage ! except where they hoped 
to become the sworn servants of Eoyalty. If the Lord 
Chamberlain's servants were accounted public, it would 
be in a special sense, not merely because they were 
players ; and certainly scandalous public manners were 
not likely to be any recommendation for such a position, 
or necessary result of it ! L In our time the phrase would 
apply, but the sense of the words, coupled with the theatre, 
is a comparatively modern growth. Even if it had applied, 
it was an impossible comment for our Poet to make on 
what he had been striving to do, and on what Southamp- 
ton had in all probability helped him to accomplish. For 
the truth is, the ' Globe ' was built in order that the 
players might reach a wider public, and Shakspeare was 
one of the first to create what we call the play-going 
public! The ' Blackfriars ' was a private theatre, chiefly 
dependent on private patronage ; the nobility preferred 
the private theatres ; the ' Globe ' was meant to appeal to 
the lower orders — or, as we say, the general public. With 
what conscience, then, could the successful innovator in 
search of the ' public ' complain of having to five by 
6 public means ' ? Here, however, the meaning, as illus- 
trated in the context, is that the speaker has to live in the 
public eye in a way that is apt to beget public manners. 

1 The title of ' the King's Servants ' was only conferred on Shakspeare's 
company of players by the Privy Seal of 1603. 



2Q6 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

He lives the public life which attracts public notice. The 
opposition is between public and private life, 1 rather than 
between riches and poverty, or modes of payment — the 
public means of living his life, rather than the public 
means of getting a living — that he wishes ' renewed.' His 
public is the only public of Shakspeare's time ; the Court 
circle and public members of the state. And the person 
of whom Shakspeare wrote thus must have been a public 
character in such sense. He must have moved in that 
circle, and been of far greater importance than a player 
could possibly be, either in his own estimation or that of the 
world at large. Such an one, for example, as is spoken 
of in sonnet 9 (p. 113), whom, should he die single, the 
' world will be his widow,' and bewail him ' like a make- 
less wife.' That is our poet's view of the ' public ' man. 
And sonnet 25 will tell us exactly what Shakspeare did not 
consider ' public,' for he therein expressly says that For- 
tune has debarred him from 'public ' honours, and, as he 
was a player then, the same fortune must have debarred him 
from ' public ' shame, resulting from living a player's life. 
The innermost sense in which the Poet spoke of the 
public man in sonnet 111 I take to be this. Shak- 
speare's great anxiety was to get his dear friend married. 
That is the Alpha and Omega of the Southampton sonnets. 
He looked to the wedded life as a means of saving his 
friend from many sad doings and fretful fooleries. But 
he was a public person, whom a monarch could and did 
forbid to marry ; who could not wed the wife of his heart 
without a sort of public permission ; who had to get mar- 
ried by public means. 2 Shakspeare looked to this fact as 
the cause of the Earl's public manners ; his broils in Court, 
his breakings-out of temper, his getting into such bad 
courses and lamentable scrapes, as made Mistress Vernon 

1 In a letter written by the Earl of Southampton to Sir Thomas Roe, 
December 24th, 1623, he expresses himself to be in lore with a country life. 

2 The affair with Willoughby would not have given rise to public scandal 
but for its having occurred at Court. 



HIS PERSONAL MANNERS. 267 

and other friends of the Earl mourn. The Poet considered 
that his friend had been irritated and made reckless by 
the obstinacy of Elizabeth the Queen in opposing his mar- 
riage with Elizabeth his love. And he holds Fortune to 
be in a great measure responsible for the Earl's harmful 
doings. This view is corroborated in sonnet 124, where 
the Earl is made to speak of his love as having been the 
' Child of State.' Shakspeare did not consider himself a 
public man living by public means, nor fancy himself of 
public importance. Of this there is the most convincing 
proof in many personal expressions. In these personal 
sonnets, he does not propose to speak of himself as one of 
the public performers on the stage of life, but like Eomeo 
going to the feast at Capulet's house, he will be a torch- 
bearer, and shed a light on the many-coloured moving 
scene rather than join in the dance. He'll be a i candle- 
holder and look on.' He will conceal himself as much as 
possible under the light which he carries, and hold it so 
that the lustre shall fall chiefly on the face of his friend 
who is in public, and whom he seeks to illumine with his 
love from the place where he stands in his privacy apart. 
As for Shakspeare's ' manners,' we know little of them in 
any public sense, but, from all printed report, we learn 
that his manners were those of a natural gentleman of 
divine descent, whose moral dignity and brave bearing 
ennobled a lowly lot, and made a despised profession 
honourable for ever. It was his manners quite as much 
as his mental superiority that silenced his envious 
rivals. It was his ' manners ' especially that elicited the 
apology from Chettle. It was his manners that inspired 
Jonson with his full-hearted exclamation, ' He was 
indeed honest, and of an open and free nature.' It 
was his ' manners ' — his good reputation — that gave the 
greatest emphasis to the pleading on behalf of the ' poor 
players ' in the letter ascribed to the Earl of Southampton. 
And so far as the word public can be applied to Shak- 



268 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

speare and his ' manners,' so far John Davies, in his ; Hu- 
mour's Heaven on Earth ' (p. 215), speaks of him precisely 
in that sense, for he speaks of Shakspeare as he saw him 
before his own public in the theatrical world, and the 
theatre, says Dekker's ' Gull's Horn-Book,' is ' your Poet's 
Royal Exchange.'' Davies compliments him, in the year 
1605, as not being one of those who act badly ' by custom 
of their manners, not one of those whose ill-actions in life 
make them ill-actors on the stage. He , speaks of Shak- 
speare as one who is of good wit, of good courage, of good 
shape, of good parts, and good altogether ; consequently 
his manners, public and private, must have been good. 

We may conclude, then, that Shakspeare did not speak 
of himself as a public man living by public means, nor 
bewail his public maimers ; that he did not draw the 
image from the stage, and thus mark the platform on 
which he stood — the place where he was making his for- 
tune — for the purpose of saying how degraded he felt 
there, and of flinging his defiance at public opinion and 
private malice ; scattering his scorn ov^r critics and flat- 
terers, and insulting his patron in the most reckless way ; 
that he did not lower and abase his brow to receive the 
brand of vulgar scandal, and then coolly ask his insulted 
friend to efface the impression — the stamp of scandal and 
dirt of degradation — with a kiss of loving pity; that a 
man who felt degraded by his calling, and branded on 
the brow because of his being a player, could not have 
occasion to stop his ears and be deaf as an adder to flat- 
tery ; that the personal interpretation derived from the 
expression ' public means ' is at war with the whole feeling 
of these sonnets, and the feeling here, as elsewhere, is the 
greatest fact of all ; that, in short, it is not Shakspeare who 
is speaking ; and the personal theory puts everything into 
confusion ; it is sufficient warrant for all that Steevens said 
of the sonnets ; it leads people to think Shakspeare wrote 
nonsense at times, and exaggerated continually. He did 



THE LOVER CONFESSES HIS SINS. 209 

nothing of the kind. I shall prove that he wrote these 
sonnets with a perfect adherence to literal facts, and that 
his art in doing so is exquisite, as in his plays. Also, the 
personal rendering deepens and darkens the impression of 
things which, when applied to the Earl and his Mistress, 
do not mean much, and are merely matter for a sonnet, 
not for the saddest of all Shakspearian tragedies : — 

THE EAEL OF SOUTHAMPTON TO ELIZABETH VEENON. 

0, never say that I was false of heart, 
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify : 
As easy might I from myself depart 
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie : 
That is my home of love : if I have ranged, 
Like him that travels ] I return again, 
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged, 
So that myself bring water for my stain : 
Never believe, tho' in my nature reigned 
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood, 
That it could so preposterously be stained, 
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good : 
For nothing this wide universe I call, 
Save thou, my Kose ! 2 in it thou art my All. 

(109.) 

Alas, 'tis true, I have gone here and there 

And made myself a motley to the view : 

Grored 3 mine own thoughts ; sold cheap what is most dear ; 

Made old offences of affections new t 

Most true it is that I have look'd on truth 

Askance and strangely ; but, by all above, 

These blenches gave my heart another youth, 

And worse essays proved thee my best of love ! 

1 'Like hiin that travels ' — lie has ranged as a traveller. 

2 'My rose.' ' 0, Rose of May' — Laertes speaking of his sister Ophelia, 
' Hamlet/ act iv. sc. 5. 

3 l Gored mine own thoughts.' So Aehilles ; in { Troilus and Cressida/ 
1 My fame is shrewdly gored ! ' 



270 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Now all is done, have what shall have no end : l 
Mine appetite I never more will grind 
On newer proof to try an older friend — 
A Grod in love, 2 to whom I am confined ! 

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best, 
Even to thy pure and most, most loving breast. 

(1.0.) 

0, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, 
The guilty Groddess of my harmful deeds, 3 
That did not better for my life provide 
Than public means which public manners breeds : 



This Malone altered to— 

' Now all is done, save what shall have no end,' 
showing that he had altogether missed the meaning. The wanderings here 
spoken of are not metaphorical, but the literal facts of the speaker's life. 
He has been a great traveller. As a traveller he left the lady, as a traveller 
he returns, and as a traveller he asks for his welcome home. His ranging 
about the world has been more from necessity than choice, on account of 
his being a public man, a servant of the State, a soldier — that is why Fortune 
is held responsible. Now, all is done : the wanderings that were but tem- 
porary are over ; accept the love, he pleads, which is eternal. In short, he 
returns this time to marry his lady, and renew his life : 

' Pity me, then, and unsh I were reneiued? 

2 i A God in love.' An expression beyond sex, indicating the strength of 
feeling that needs the most masculine utterance, akin to that which made 
Elizabeth a prince and a governor, and hailed Maria Theresa as a king in 
the Magyar Assembly. So in the Bible, Man is used to express the sum 
total of sex. A ' God in love ' is really only warranted by its being addressed 
to a woman. Also, a ' Goddess in love ' would not have suited, because it is 
the greatness, the divinity of the love, rather than of the person, that is 
meant to be conveyed. The expression, applied to a woman, is suggestively 
illustrated in the ' Comedy of Errors.' Antipholus of Syracuse replies to 
Luciana, ' Sweet mistress — what your name is else I know not,' and he asks — 

' Are you a God? would you create me new? 
Transform me then, and to your power Til yield? 

This is not the only instance of Shakspeare's audacity producing something 
extraordinary by reversing the ordinary — a perilous process in lesser hands ! 
In ' Julius Csesar ' he thus intensifies the feeling of scorn : — 

1 His coward lips did/rom their colours Jly.' 

Which dash of soldierly daring Warburton called a ( poor quibble ! ' 

3 In sonnet 69 (p. 241) it was the person addressed whose deeds had been 
so harmful j whose name had grown so common. 



THE LOVER PLEADS FOR PARDON. 271 

Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 

And almost thence my nature is subdued 

To what it works in, like the Dyer's hand ; 

Pity me then and wish I were renewed : 

Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 

Potions of eysell 'gainst my strong infection : 

No bitterness that I will bitter think, 

Nor double-penance, to correct correction : 

Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye, 
Even that your pity is enough to cure me. 

(in.) 

Your love and pity doth the impression fill 
Which vulgar scandal stampt upon my brow ; l 
For what care I who calls me well or ill, 
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow : 
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive 
To know my shames and praises from your tongue ; 
None else to me, nor I to none alive, 
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong — 
In so profound abysm I throw all care 
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense 
To critic and to flatterer stopped are : 
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense — 
You are so strongly in my purpose bred 
That all the world besides methinks are dead. 

(112.) 

'Tis better to be vile than vile-esteemed, 

When not to be receives reproach of being, 

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed, 

Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing : 

For why should others' false adulterate eyes 

Give salutation to my sportive blood ? 

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, 

W T hich in their wills count bad what I think good ? 

No, I am that I am, and they that level 

At my abuses reckon up their own : 

1 In sonnet 70 (p. 226) it was the person addressed who had been the mark 
of slander and subject of public scandal. 



272 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

I may be straight tho' they themselves be bevel ; 

By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown : 
Unless this general evil they maintain 
All men are bad and in their badness reign. 

(121.) 

Accuse me thus — that I have scanted all 

Wherein I should your great deserts repay ; 

Forgot upon your dearest love to call, 

Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day ; l 

That I have frequent been with unknown minds 

And given to Time your own dear-purchased right; 2 

That I have hoisted sail to all the winds 

Which should transport me farthest from your sight : 

Book both my wilfulness and errors down, 

And on just proof surmise accumulate ; 

Bring me within the level of your frown, 

But shoot not at me in your wakened hate ; 

Since my appeal says, I did strive to prove 
The constancy and virtue of your love. 

(.17.) 
Like as, to make our appetites more keen, 
With eager compounds we our palate urge, 
As, to prevent our maladies unseen, 
We sicken, to shun sickness, when we purge ; 
Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, 
To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding 
And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness 
To be diseased ere that there was true needing ; 
Thus policy in love, to anticipate 
The ills that were not, grew to faults assured ; 
And brought to medicine a healthful state 
Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured : 
But thence I learn, and find the lesson true, 
Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you. 

(us.) 

1 See the extract from Mr. Chamberlain's letter for a very natural gloss 
on this line. 

2 What dearly-purchased right to Shakspeare's companionship could the 
Earl of Southampton have had which the poet had ' given to Time ? ' The 
speaker here is the person addressed by Shakspeare himself in sonnet 70 
(p. 226), as 'being wooed of Time.' 



THE GOOD IN THINGS EVIL. 273 

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, 

Distilled from lymbecks foul as hell within ; 1 

Applying fears to hopes, and hopes to fears, 

Still loosing when I saw myself to win ! 

What wretched errors hath my heart committed, 

Whilst it hath thought itself so blessed never ! 

How have mine eyes out of their spheres been flitted 2 

In the distraction of this madding fever ! 

O benefit of ill ! now I find true 

That better is by evil made still better : 

And ruined love, when it is built anew, 

Grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater : 
So I return rebuked to my content, 
And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent. 

(119.) 



1 In Sonnet 67 (p. 239) it was the person addressed who was dwelling 
in infectious society, and gracing impiety with his presence ! 

2 ' Flitted.' The Quarto reads ' fitted/ hut I cannot think that Shak- 
speare's omnipresent vision and wakeful humour would allow him to say 
the eyes had heen fitted out of their spheres, when, if they had heen fitted at 
all, it would have been in their spheres. It must, I apprehend, he a mis- 
print for ' flitted,' the word that, above all others, signifies a ' moving ' or re- 
moval to the Scotch mind. Spenser makes use of the word ' flit ' : — 

* For on a sandy hill that still did flitt, 
And fall away, it mounted was full hie.' 

Fairfax's ' Tasso ' (5, 58) has it— 

' Alas, that cannot be, for he is flit 
Out of this camp.' 

In Psalm 56 we find, 'Thou tellest my 'flittmgs? And Puttenham calls 
the figure Metastasis the ' Flitting Figure,' or the ' Remove.' The meaning 
of the line is, hoio have mine eyes been moved out of their spheres. It is sus- 
ceptible of a double interpretation. Figuratively, how have mine eyes 
wandered like those of Solomon's fool, that i rounded about in the darkness,' 
instead of wisely keeping watch in my head. But Shakspeare takes his 
stand so firmly on the physical fact (want of faith in this characteristic of 
his mind has prevented our understanding the sonnets, made it impossible 
for us to follow, because we did not trust the element !), that I rather con- 
clude he meant literally how have mine eyes heen drawn inward by the 'pain 
I have suffered, until they are sunken in their sockets ; they have been ' flitted ' 
in the distraction of this maddening fever. A motion the exact opposite to 
that of the eyes starting from their spheres, in ' Hamlet,' under the influence 
of great terror. 



274 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

That you were once unkind * befriends me now, 
And for that sorrow which I then did feel 
Needs must I under my transgression bow, 
Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel 
For if you were by my unkindness shaken 
As I hy yours, you've passed a hell of time, 
And I, a Tyrant, have no leisure taken 
To weigh how once I suffered in your crime : 
0, that our night of woe might have remembered 
My deepest sense how hard true sorrow hits, 
And soon to you as you to me then tendered 
The humble salve which wounded bosoms fits ! 
But let 2 your trespass now become a fee : 
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me. 

(120.) 

The speaker of these sonnets is one in character and 
circumstance with him who has left his Mistress for the 
journey in the earlier pages, and whom we find on distant 
shores (' limits far remote '), with ' injurious distance ' of 
earth and sea between him and his beloved, to whom his 
thoughts are sent in tender embassy of love. The same 
speaker as him of sonnet 97 (p. 248), who has again been 
absent through the spring, summer, and autumn of the 
year. And here he speaks of those absences ; says what a 
traveller he has been ; acknowledges having hoisted sail 
to every wind that would blow him farthest from her sight ; 
been frequently with ' unknown minds,' or in foreign coun- 
tries, when he ought to have stayed with her at home. It 
is the same person whom Shakspeare addresses in sonnet 
70 (p. 226), as being the mark of slander and envy, one of 
those who attract the breath of slander and scandal natu- 
rally as flames draw air. In these sonnets he speaks of 
being slandered, and of vulgar scandal as branding his 

1 ' Once unkind.' In the lady's jealousy of her cousin, Penelope Rich. 

2 The Quarto reads, 'but th»t your trespass, which somewhat obscures 
the meaning ; let is far more in accordance with the pleading tone of the 
sonnet. 



PREVIOUS CHARGES ADMITTED TO BE TRUE. 275 

brow. It is the same as him of whom Shakspeare said — 
4 Ah, wherefore with infection should he live (sonnet 67). 
Also in sonnet 94 (p. 241) : — 

4 But if that flower with base infection meet, 
The basest weed outbraves his dignity.' 

And here, in pleading with his Mistress, this ranging 
sinning Lover is willing to drink ' potions of Eysell 'gainst 
his " strong infection ! " ' The same as him of sonnet 
69 (p. 241), whose mind the Poet said the world mea- 
sured by his ill deeds, and who had grown common 
in the mouths of men. Here he bewails those harmful 
deeds of his which have made him grow common, or 
the subject of vulgar scandal. This is the same victim 
of his fate as we have before met, who was in disgrace 
with Fortune, sonnet 29 (p. 166) ; made lame by For- 
tune's dearest spite, in sonnet 37 (p. 168) ; had suffered 
the spite of Fortune once more, in sonnet 90 (p. 246); 
and he now pleads in mitigation of his offences that 
Fortune is the guilty goddess of his harmful doings ; she 
who has so driven him about the world. He confesses 
to all that Shakspeare had mourned in the personal son- 
nets ; acknowledges that ' sensual fault ' of his nature 
which Elizabeth Vernon had before spoken of (at p 207) ; 
makes what excuses he can, and begs that all errors and 
failings may be blotted from the book of her remembrance. 
It is the plea of a penitent Lover praying his Mistress to 
forgive his sins against true love ; his full confession of all 
that he has done, and his reply to what others have said 
on the subject of his doings. He asks her not to say that 
he was false at heart because of his absences from her, 
though these may have made him seem indifferent, and 
appeared to diminish his love. He could just as easily 
part from himself as from his soul, which dwells in her 
breast ; so deeply rooted in reality is his love, in despite 
of surface appearances. Her bosom is his home of love, 



27G SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

to which he returns like a traveller ; that is the port of 
his pleasure and soft rest of all his pain. He comes back, 
too, true to the time appointed, and not changed with the 
time. Moreover, he brings water for his stain ; comes 
back to her in tears. But though he is stained or dis- 
figured by many frailties, she must not believe that he 
could be so stained, so disfigured from the shape she first 
knew and loved, as to leave for nothing the sum of good 
and summit of glory which he attains in her, for he counts 
as nothing the whole wide universe compared with her 
who is creation's crown, his Eose ! his All ! Alas ! he 
admits it is quite true what she says of his wanderings, 
his flyings- off at random, his making such a fool of himself 
in public. He has gone here and there — a motley to the 
view — made light of his love, and been an old offender to 
his new affection. It is most true that he has shied at the 
truth, flinched from it, looked at it coyly, reservedly, as 
though it were a stranger, and has not made the beloved 
his wife as he ought to have done ; but these starts and 
far-flights from the path of right have given his heart 
another youth, his affection a fresh beginning, and his 
worse attempts have proved her to be his best of love. 
Now all is done ; his wanderings and voyagings are over ; 
he begs her to accept what shall have no end, his de- 
voted undivided love, which shall be henceforth lived in 
her presence. He has come home, as we say, for good 
and all, and if she will but forgive him this one little last 
time, he will never do so any more. He will not again 
sharpen his old appetite for arms and adventure on any 
newer further proof to try this dear friend, who was his 
before his war-career and wanderings began — this ' God in 
love ' to whom he is so bounden. ' Then give me welcome 
to the best place next heaven, thy pure and most, most 
loving breast.' And ' do not think the worst of me ; quarrel 
a little with Fortune. She is guilty of much that I have 
done. She placed me in a public position, in the power 



THE TOUCH OF TRUTH IS THE TOUCH OP LIFE. 277 

of a Queen who so long tried to hinder me from making 
you mine own ; made me live so much in the public eye, 
and drove me to do things which have been so talked 
about by the public tongue.' Thence it arises that his 
name has been made the mark of scandal, and his nature 
has been almost subdued to what it works in, like the 
dyer's hand. And here we come upon a striking example 
of the way in which the ' pith and puissance ' of the son- 
nets have been unappreciated and unperceived. They have 
been read as imagery alone, images painted on air and 
not founded on facts, without any grasp of the meaning 
which the images were only intended to convey and 
heighten, whereas the value of Shakspeare's images lies 
in their second self, and this has so often been invisible to 
the reader. The image of the dyer's hand is well-known, 
and considered to be fine, yet that which it symbols has 
never been seen. The perfection of its use, the very 
clasp of the comparison, the touch which makes the image 
absolutely alive, lie in the fact that the speaker is a man 
of arms, a soldier, a fighter, apt to carry his public pro- 
fession into the practice of his private life ; and thus he 
speaks of his nature as subdued to what it works in, and 
his hand as wearing the colour of blood — dyed in blood ! 
Therein lies 'the likeness to the dyer's hand! (In ' King 
John ' we have the soldiers' 

i Purpled hands 
Dyed in the dyeing slaughter of their foes.') 

'Pity me then on this account, and wish me better 
— my life renewed. I would willingly drink "potions 
of Eysell " for what I have wilfully clone. I should 
think no bitterness bitter that would disinfect me, no 
penance too hard for my correction. But pity me, 
dear friend, and your pity will be enough to cure me. 
Your love and pity suffice to efface the mark which 
common talk stamped on my brow. What do I care 



278 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

how their tongues wag, or reck what they say of me, 
so that your tenderness folds up my faults as the green 
grass hides the grave, or the ivy's embrace conceals the 
scars of time. You are my all-the- world, the only voice 
I listen to. To all others I turn a deaf ear, and in fact 
all the rest of the world are dead to me.' 

Then follows a bit of special pleading, only pardonable 
to one who, in regard to the report of others, feels more 
sinned against than sinning. Some ' carry-tale,' some 
' putter-on,' some ' please-man,' has been busy with his 
name and his amusements, or some babbling gossip of a 
woman has falsely interpreted his doings. Against such 
he can make a better defence. The spies oil his frailties 
are themselves frailer than he is. The Court lady who 
has spoken of his loose conduct has herself looked on him 
with wanton wooing eyes. The persons aimed at in this 
sonnet may be Lady Eicli and Ambrose Willoughby. 
Whoever they are, he scorns to be measured by their rule. 
They desire to think bad and speak ill of that which he 
thinks good. In speaking of him, they do but reckon up 
their own abuses. He may be straight, though they be 
crooked— that may be why the estimate is wrong ; the 
measurement untrue — and his doings must not be judged 
by their foul thoughts. The summing-up of his reply 
says that he is not so bad as they would have him seem, 
and no worse in a general way than others are. He goes 
on to show her how she can put the case against him more 
justly: 'Accuse me thus: that I have come short in all 
I owe to your love and worth ; forgot to call upon your 
most active love, in the name of husband, to which all 
bonds — especially that nearer tie of life-in-life — do bind 
me closer daily ; that I have given to Time your rights, 
which were purchased by you so dearly at the cost of 
long-suffering and sore heart-ache and many tears ; that 
I have hoisted sail to every wind that blew, which would 
waft me the farthest away from you ; been abroad fre- 



HOW BLIND LOVE HAS BEEN BEFOOLED. 279 

quently, and spent my time amongst foreigners instead of 
being with you at home ; book botli my wilfulness and 
errors down, all that you know and can suspect, and bring 
me within sight of my doom ; take aim, but do not shoot 
at me in your awakened hatred. My appeal says I only 
did these things to prove your constancy, and test the 
virtue of your love. As we whet the appetite and urge 
the palate with " eager compounds," and " sicken to shun 
sickness " when we purge, so did I turn to bitter things 
because I was so filled with your sweetness. I was so well 
that there was a sort of satisfaction in being ill.' The 
lover finds a kind of fitness in ' being diseased ere that 
there was true needing.' But this policy of his love, which 
anticipated by inoculation the ills that were not, grew to 
6 faults assured.' There was something wrong in the virus 
that he had not bargained for. And he suffered much 
in recovering the healthy state, which ' rank of goodness ' 
must needs be cured by ill. His experience has taught 
him that his medical course was not altogether a success ; 
he finds the drugs poison him who had fallen sick of her. 
But what doses he has swallowed in his circuitous course 
in search of health ! He has sailed the seas, and listened 
to the songs of the sirens, and been flattered and fooled 
by their tears ; he has drunk potions distilled from lym- 
becks foul as hell within ; set fears against hopes and 
hopes against fears. He has played the game in which 
the winner loses most. He has committed the most 
wretched errors of the heart whilst he was thinking 
himself never so blessed. What a blind fool he has 
been ! How his eyes have been flitted out of their 
proper spheres in the distraction of this maddening 
fever, engendered of war and wandering. But there is 
this benefit in evil, that it serves to show the good in a 
clearer light ; makes the best things better. And love 
that has been rent asunder maybe joined anew, like other 
fractured articles, the newly soldered part becoming the 



280 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

strongest, even firmer than at first. So he returns from 
his evil courses, his erratic wanderings, his visionary pur- 
suit of pleasure, his futile imitation of the boy and but- 
terfly — humbled and sobered, to the home of his heart 
and the seat of his content, a sadder and a wiser man ; 
sufficiently so to gain by his experience three-fold more 
than he has spent in his folly, and to discover how sweet 
are the uses of adversity. 

The last argument urged for the making up of this love- 
quarrel contains a reference to an old falling-out, in which 
the lady had accused her lover wrongfully. 4 That you 
were once unkind to me is fortunate for me now ! When 
I think of what I suffered on that occasion, it makes me 
feel doubly what I have caused you to bear ; for if you 
have been as much pained, by my unkindness as I was by 
yours, then you have suffered a hell indeed ; and I, a 
tyrant, did not for a moment think how you were suffer- 
ing, even in remembering how I myself once suffered by 
the wrong you did to me. I wish now that our dark night 
of sadness had reminded me how hard true sorrow hits ; 
what cruel blows the hand of love can give ; and that I 
had come to you as quickly and tendered to you as 
frankly the balm that befits a wounded heart, as you then 
came to me with healing, reconciliation, and peace ! But 
let your fault of the Past now become a fee ; my wrong 
ransoms your's ; your wrong must ransom me ! ' 

We shall see by referring to the life of Southampton 
that he went abroad three years running after meeting 
with Mistress Vernon. In the year 1596, he hurriedly 
left England to follow the Earl of Essex, who was gone 
on the expedition to Cadiz. Being too late for the 
fighting in that year, I conjecture that he joined his friend 
Eoger Manners, Earl of Rutland, who was then making 
a tour of France, Italy and Switzerland. In the year 
1597 he was with Essex on the Island Voyage, in com- 
mand of the ' Garland.' And in the following year he 



THE RARL HAS MADE A PUBLIC FOOL OF HIMSELF. 281 

left England to offer His sword to Henry IV. of France, 
and was again absent for some months. He had thus been 
in foreign countries, mixed with 'unknown minds' — people 
who do not speak our language — and to do this he had 
taken advantage of every breeze that would fill his sail 
which had flapped idly whilst his vessel lay lazily in har- 
bour, and he eagerly waited the tide and whistled for a 
wind. This he had done in a reckless mood, and ' given 
to Time ; ' he had spent the time away from his mistress, 
which was her's by right, and dearly purchased too. 

It will be seen that the speaker of the second of these 
sonnets has made himself a Motley to the view. If he 
had been speaking of wearing the Fool's coat of many 
colours, he would not have been necessarily making a fool 
of himself. The image is not used in that sense. If he 
had been playing the Fool's part on the stage, it would 
be Fortune that had made him a Motley to the view ; not 
himself. Here, however, the speaker has made a fool of 
himself, not by wearing the player's motley. He does not 
mean that he has played the Fool in jest, but that he has. 
been a fool in sad earnest, by his wanderings about the 
world, his absence from the dear bosom on which he yearns 
to pillow his head at last, his manifold offences to this 
affection ; his starts from rectitude ; his looking on truth 
with a sidelong glance ; and, most of all, his quarrels in 
public, in the camp, in the Court, in the street, whereby 
he has made himself a Motley in public to the view, and 
become the subject of a public scandal. He has been the 
fool who had not the privilege of bearing the Clown's 
bauble and wearing the many-coloured coat. ' I wear 
not Motley in my brain,' says the Fool in ' Twelfth Night ; ' 
this was exactly how the young Earl had worn it. All the 
literalness is in the fact, not in the image ; it is Southampton 
to the life, not Shakspeare following his profession. 

Then the confession of sonnet 119 can only have been 
made to a woman. It would have no meaning from a 



282 SIIAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

man to a man. It is a confession to a woman that the 
speaker has been beguiled by the siren tears of other 
women, who were false and foul. He is penitent for those 
wretched errors which he has thus committed, still losing 
when he fancied he was the winner. He asks forgive- 
ness for this among his other wanderings. He makes a 
comparison, and appeals from the false love to the true, 
which he now sees in the truer light, and vows to be 
eternally true. It is out of nature for Shakspeare to 
plead in this way. He could not have left the Earl, nor 
come back to him ; could not protest the truth of his love 
in any such sense as is here implied. Besides which, if 
the dark story had been well-founded, he would not then 
have left his friend to follow the sirens. His passionate 
outpourings on that occasion would be in reproach of the 
Earl for having left him, and for being lured away by the 
woman. It was the Earl who was represented as going 
astray, not the Poet. All that he wanted was to be left 
in quiet possession of his cockatrice, and keep his friend 
the Earl true to him. The falsehood as well as the wan- 
dering was the friend's. Shakspeare showed no desire to 
desert his friend for a mistress ; no wish to leave his mis- 
tress for his friend. He was only anxious to keep both, 
and to keep them apart from each other. His grief was 
not that he loved the woman, but that his friend also loved 
her ; not that the mistress had taken his heart from his 
friend, but his friend from him to herself. Position and 
effects are quite different to those supposed to have been 
represented in those earlier sonnets, and the confession 
here has no fitting relationship to the past in that way ; 
no meaning as from man to man. 

In the life and character of Southampton alone shall we 
discover the subject of this group of sonnets, spoken by 
the Earl to his much-encluring mistress, Elizabeth Yernon. 
There only will be found the opposition of Fortune, the 
breaking-out and 'blenches' of rebellious blood, the 



THE PUBLIC LIFE THAT MADE THE ' MANNERS.' PUBLIC 283 

harmful doings that were the cause of common scandal, 
the absences abroad, and all the trials of that true love here 
addressed. Also, in the Earl's case only are the excuses on 
the score of Fortune at all admissible. Shakspeare was really 
a favourite of Fortune, both in his life and friendship ; she 
smiled on him graciously. ISTor is there a single complaint 
against her in the whole of the personal sonnets ; neither 
can we see that he had any reason to complain. He does 
not accredit Fortune with any spite towards him, nor 
show any himself. But, as we have seen, Fortune was 
against the Earl, his friend, in the person of the Queen, 
and her opposition to his marriage ; and but for his being 
a public man and so much in the power of the Court for 
appointment and preferment, he would not have had so 
long and trying a fight with Fortune. He could have 
carried off his love and lived a calmer life ; he would have 
escaped many a scar that he received in the struggle with 
such an untoward Fortune as at length landed him by the 
side of Essex at the scaffold foot, although he had not to 
mount the steps. He was also a soldier of Fortune, not 
only fighting under the English Crown, but seeking ser- 
vice and glad of any fighting that could be got. As a 
soldier so circumstanced, and a man of so fiery a spirit 
that it led him into braAvls, he could fairly say — 

' Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
And almost thence my nature is subdued 
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand : 
Pity me then and wish / were renewed? 

Poor fellow ! he was continually ' in for it.' Xo doubt 
there were many things known to Shakspeare and Mrs. 
Vernon that have not come down to us, besides the pro- 
posed duels which the Queen had to prohibit, and the 
hubbub in Court, for which ; vulgar scandal ' stamped the 
Earl's brow, and Elizabeth Vernon effaced the impression 
with her ' love and pity ' ; but we know quite enough . 



28-4 SIIAKSPEAKES SONNETS. 

Thus, in Southampton's life, we can identify every circum- 
stance touched upon in this group of sonnets ; veritable 
facts that quicken every figure and make every line alive. 

Eowland Whyte in his letters, and Shakspeare in these 
lines, chronicle the same occurrences and paint companion 
pictures of the same character, whilst the sonnets as 
clearly and recognisably reflect the image and motion of 
the young Earl's mind, the impetuous currents of his 
nature, as any portrait could present to us the features of 
his face. In all respects the opposite to the character in 
whose presence we feel ourselves, when Shakspeare per- 
sonally speaks, and we hear the ground-tone of a weightier 
mind, and the feeling has a more sober certainty, the 
thought a more quiet depth ; the music tells of no jarring 
string. 

Sonnet 116 is a personal one ; the speaker in it is the 
writer of it. And it is sufficient evidence that the sonnets 
which we have called confessional do not, cannot, refer to 
Shakspeare's doings, pourtray his character, or express his 
feelings. If they had, this sonnet would be an amazing 
conclusion, and contain his own utter condemnation, 
spoken with an unconscionable jauntiness of tone. He 
would have been a sinner in each particular against the 
law and gospel of true love, which he now expounds so em- 
phatically. ' Love's not Time's fool ; ' yet, on his own 
confession, he would have cruelly and continually made it 
the fool of Time and sport of accident. Love is ' an ever- 
fixed mark ; ' he says, and he would have wilfully and 
wantonly cut himself adrift from its resting-place. ' Love 
alters not ; ' but he would have been moved lightly as a 
feather with every breath of change. If he had been 
the speaker in the foregoing sonnets, he could not now 
say : c Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit 
impediments.' He could not call himself true, if so false. 
He could not have uttered his own condemnation with so 
airy and joyous a swing ; so lusty a sense of freedom. 



S( IUTHAMPTON MARRIED AT LAST. 285 

He could not thus exult in the genuine attributes of true 
love, and say, ' if this be error and upon me proved, I 
never writ, nor no man ever loved.' It would have been 
proved only too clearly that he was in error, or else that 
he was a bold hypocrite — if he were the guilty one who 
had before confessed ! But the line, ' I never writ, nor no 
man ever loved,' almost divides the subject into its two 
parts, and points out the two speakers. It shows Shak- 
speare to be the writer on a subject extraneous to him- 
self except as writer. And here the poet is commenting 
upon a matter quite external, the particulars of which do 
not, and the generalities cannot, apply to him personally. 
The comment, too, is on the very facts confessed by the 
scapegrace of the previous sonnets. Those were the con- 
fessions of a love that had not been altogether true ; this 
is the exaltation of the highest, holiest love. It is Shak- 
speare's own voice heard in conclusion of the quarrelling 
and unkindness ; his summing-up of the whole matter. 
His own spirit shines through this sonnet. It is a perfectly 
apposite discourse on the loves of Southampton and Eliza- 
beth Vernon. The confessional sonnets were written in 
illustration of the last full reconciliation of this couple, 
whose love did not run smooth outwardly, which is so apt 
to beget ripples inwardly. They were married in the year 
following that in which the hubbub in Court and the con- 
sequent scandal had occurred, and this sonnet is in 
celebration of the happy event. 

SHAKSPEARE ON THE EARL'S MARRIAGE. 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments : Love is not Jove 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove ! 

Oh, no ; it is an ever -fixed mark 

That looks on tempests, and is never shaken ! 

It is the star to every wandering bark, 

Whose worth's unknown, altho' his height be taken : 



286 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

Love's not Time's fool, tho' rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come ; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom : ] 

If this be error and upon me proved 

I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

(.16.) 

This is a marriage service of the Poet's own, with an 
obvious reference to the marriage service of the English 
Church. He gives his answer, he who knows all the cir- 
cumstances of the case and is acquainted with all his 
friend's failings, to the appeal as to whether any witness 
knows of sufficient cause or impediment why these two 
should not be joined together in the holy matrimonial 
bond. The Poet knows of their quarrels and of the 
Earl's wild or wanton courses ; but he says firmly, let me 
not admit these as impediments to the marriage of true 
minds. If my friend has done all these sad things which 
have been confessed, yet is it not the nature of true love 
to alter and change when it finds change in another ; 
because one has wandered and removed literally that is 
not sufficient reason why the other should waver and fly 
off in spirit. Appearances themselves are false where 
hearts are true. 

The supreme object of Shakspeare's sonnets was to aid 
in getting the Earl, his friend, married, and see him safe 
in Mistress Vernon's arms, encompassed with content. 
This is the be-all and end-all of his song ; his one theme 
with many variations. He woos him towards the door 
of the sanctuary with the most amorous diligence and 
coaxing words. He tries by many winning ways to get 
the youth to enter. He rebukes him when he flinches 
from it ; and the last effort he makes for the consumma- 

1 ' Even to the edge of doom ;' so in < All's Well that Ends Well/ to the 
' extreme edge of hazard/ and in ' Macbeth/ the ' crack of doom/ i.e., the 
breaking up of nature. 



THE POET CROWNS ELIZABETH VERNON'S 'TRUE LOVE.' 287 

tion so devoutly wished almost amounts to a visible push 
from behind. He has attacked all the obstacles that 
stood in the way ; scolded the Earl for his ' blenches ' 
from the right path ; no mother ever more anxious about 
some wild slip of rebellious blood ; and now, when he is 
safe at last, with the rosy fetters round his neck, and the 
golden ring is on the finger of the wife, their Poet grows 
jubilant with delight ; a great weight is off his heart, and 
he breathes freely on the subject of the Earl's courtship 
for the first time ; can even speak with a dash of joyful 
abandon. The writer is in his cheeriest mood and the 
sonnet has a festal style. The true love that is apotheo- 
sized in this wedding strain is not the affection of Shak- 
speare ; not the love of the Earl, his friend ; but the 
steadfast, pure and lofty love of Elizabeth Vernon ! This 
is the love that has not been the fool or slave of Time ; 
that has altered not with his brief hours and weeks, but 
has borne all the trials ; been true to the very ' edge of 
doom ' and kept her heart firmly fixed even when, as 
Rowland Whyte hints, her mind threatened to waver and 
give way. She did not alter when she found an alteration 
in him ; did not ' bend with the remover (the traveller and 
wanderer) to remove.' She was ' the ever-fixed mark ; ' 
the lighthouse in the storm, that ' looked on tempests and 
was never shaken,' but held up its lamp across the gloom. 
Her true love was the fixed star of his wandering bark, 
that shone when the sun went down ; this was his glory 
in disgrace ; his fount of healing when wounded by the 
world, or his own self-inflicted injuries ; the bright, still 
blessedness that touched his troubled thoughts ; his resting- 
place, where the Poet hoped he would at last find peace, 
and hear in his household love, the murmurs of a dearer 
music than any he could make in a sonneteering strain. 

There is in this sonnet one of those instances of Shak- 
speare's mode of vivifying by means of an image, which 
are a never-ending surprise to his readers. But it takes 



288 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS'. 

all its life from the love-story now unfolded. It is the 
astronomical allusion to Elizabeth Vernon as the star 
whose worth was unknown although its height was 
measured — meaning that there yet remained the unex- 
plored world of wedded love ; the undiscovered riches of 
the wedded life. Although the distance between them 
had been taken, the best could not be known until he has 
made that star his dwelling-place and home of love ; 
knows its hidden worth as well as he knew its brightness 
and its faithfulness as a guiding light in the distance. 

The Queen's opposition to the marriage of Southampton 
and Elizabeth Vernon is apparent all through these sonnets 
devoted to them. The burden of the whole story is an 
opposition which has to be borne awhile. This is figured 
as the spite of Fortune and the tyranny of Time. In 
sonnet 36 (p. 176) the spite begins by separating the two 
lovers, and stealing sweet hours from love's delight ; this 
enforced parting is the first shape taken by Time's tyranny. 
In his absence the lover speaks of his mistress as his 
locked-up treasure kept by Time. Sonnet 70 (p. 226) 
recognises how much the Earl is tried by this waiting 
imposed upon him by Time. Moreover, the promises of 
immortality are expressly made to right this wrong of 
Time. Against all the powers of Time and 'Death and 
all-oblivious Enmity ' shall he c pace forth,' wearing an 
eternal crown which he has won by his steadfastness in 
love. And in this marriage sonnet the true love is 
crowned by the Poet because it has not been the fool or 
slave of Time ; has not given in to the adverse circum- 
stances, or succumbed to the opposition, but ' borne it out 
even to the edge of doom.' 



289 



PERSONAL SONNETS. 

1599 1600. 



SHAKSPEAKE TO THE EARL, CHIEFLY ON HIS OWN 

DEATH. 



This is a group of very touching sonnets. JNowhere 
else shall we draw more near to the poet in his own per- 
son. They look as if written in contemplation of death. 
They have a touch of physical languor : the tinge of 
solemn thought. And if they were composed at such a 
time, they show us how limitedly autobiographic the 
sonnets were intended to be. Shakspeare never speaks 
of himself except in relation to the Earl. Here his request 
is that, should he die, his friend is not to mourn for him 
any longer even than the death-bell tolls. He would 
rather be forgotten by the Earl than that his friend should 
grieve for him when he is gone. Also, he begs that the 
Earl will not so much as mention his name, lest the keen 
hard world should see the disparity betwixt what the friend 
in his kindness may have thought of the Poet and its own 
shrewder estimate : for if the world should task the living 
to tell what merit there was in him that is dead, the 
Earl will be put to shame, or be driven to speak falsely of 
one whom he loved truly. 

The third sonnet appears to me to have in it more of 

u 



290 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

illness than of age. The Poet is urging excuses ; and, in 
case he should die, he is making the best of it for his 
friend. Then he is decrying his own appearance as one 
that sees himself in the glass when worn and broken by 
suffering. He feels his life to be in the sere and yellow 
leaf. The boughs are growing bare where the sweet birds 
lately sang. The twilight is creeping over all, cold and 
grey. The fire that he has warmed himself by is sinking 
low ; there is more white ash than ruddy glow. All this 
he urges in case the flame should go out suddenly. The 
sonnet concludes with another excuse. Because this is 
so, and the Earl sees it, that is why his love grows stronger, 
fearing lest it should lose him. ' But do not mind/ he 
says, ' though I should die, yet shall I be with you ; I 
shall live on in the lines which I leave ; these shall stay 
with you as a memorial of our love. When you look at 
these sonnets, you will see the very part of me that was 
consecrated to you. Earth can but take its own as food 
for the worms. My spirit is yours, and that remains with 
you.' ' Against the time shall come/ he continues, ' when 
my friend shall be, as I am now, bowed down and crushed 
by "Time's injurious hand," when the blood runs thin, and 
the brow is as a map filled with the lines and crosses of 
care ; his day is approaching " age's steepy night," and his 
beauty is vanishing — against such a time as this have I 
written these sonnets, (which are to remain with him), so 
that when he dies his beauty may live on in enduring 
youth.' ' Either I shall live to write your epitaph, or 
you will survive long after me ; be this as it may, Death 
shall not take hence the memory of you, although I shall 
be quite forgotten. Your name shall have immortal life 
from these lines, although I, once gone, shall be gone for 
ever. The earth will yield me but a common grave ; your 
grave shall be in the eyes of men, and my verse shall 
build your gentle monument.' 

I am by no means sure that the first two lines of the 



THE POET FEELS SOMEWHAT BROKEN IN SPIRIT. 291 

5th sonnet do not indicate more than age or illness. 
When we consider Shakspeare's reticence on the subject of 
self, they look particularly pointed for a passing allusion. 
Time is not used for age in these two lines ; that follows 
in the next line ; these contain their own particulars. The 
Poet is crushed and overworn by Time's injurious hand. 
Here is the same personification of Time, the ruling 
tyrant, as we find in the sonnets spoken by Southampton. 
It is time present, not time in general. Then ' injurious' 
is an appellation of reproach, meaning that from the pre- 
sent time, or at the present moment, Shakspeare is suf- 
fering some wrong which is unjustly hurtful. Time's 
hand is here injurious in a moral rather than physical 
sense. And this wrong, whether of detraction or perse- 
cution, he feels to be so great, that he is quite ' crushed 
and overworn.' Steevens remarked of this expression, that 
to say first he was crushed and then overworn, was little 
better than to say of a man that he was first killed and 
then wounded. But it is perfectly right, and much like 
the Poet's inclusive way of speaking, if he felt crushed in 
the moral sense, as well as worn down in physical health. 
And that there was such an accumulation of affliction is 
shown by the emphatic ' As I am nowV What was this 
heavy injustice which so bowed the Poet's spirit at the 
time, and caused the nearest approach to a personal cry- 
in the whole of the sonnets ? As the sonnet is addressed 
to Southampton, the subject will be one that he is cogni- 
sant of, and in which he is interested, or even this little 
allusion to himself would hardly have been permitted by 
the Poet. It may have to do with Shakspeare's having 
fallen under the suspicion of those in authority, possibly 
of Majesty itself, on account of Southampton's friendly 
intimacy and his appearance of being bound up with the 
cause of Essex. Had he not said something very flatter- 
ing of the Earl in his Henry Y. ? This may have been 
reported to the injury of the Poet, and resented by Her 

u2 



292 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Majesty. It was something very important, or it would 
not have been chronicled in a personal sonnet. 

No longer mourn for me, when I am dead, 
Than you shall bear the surly sullen bell 
Grive warning to the world that I am fled 
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell : 
Nay, if you read this line remember not 
The hand that writ it ; for I love you so 
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot. 
If thinking on me then should make you woe : 
if— -I say — you look upon this verse 
When I perhaps compounded am with clay, 1 
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse, 
But let your love even with my life decay : 

Lest the wise world should look into your moan, 
And mock you with me after I am gone. 

0, lest the World should task you to recite 
What merit lived in me, that you should love 
After my death, dear Love, forget me quite,, 
For you in me can nothing worthy prove ; 
Unless you would devise some virtuous lie, 
To do more for me than mine own desert, 
And hang more praise upon deceased I 
Than niggard truth would willingly impart : 
lest your true love may seem false in this, 
That you for love speak well of me untrue, 
My name be buried where my body is, 
And live no more to shame nor me nor you ! 

For I am shamed by that which I bring forth, 
And so should you, to love things nothing worth* 

(71.) 

That time of year thou may'st in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold 
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang ! 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day 
As after sunset fadeth in the west, 

1 So ' Hamlet/ when asked what lie has done with the dead body of 
Polonius, replies, ' Compounded it with dust, whereto r tis kin.' 



■Tf 



THE PROMISED IMMORTALITY. 293 

Which by and by black night doth take away, 
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest ! 
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 
Consumed with that which it was nourished by : 

This thou perceiv'st, which mak'st thy love more strong 
To love that well which thou must lose ere long. 

(73.) 

But be contented ! when that fell arrest 

Without all bail shall carry me away, 

My life hath in this line some interest. 

Which for memorial still with thee shall stay : 

When thou reviewest this, thou dost review 

The very part was consecrate to thee : 

The Earth can have but earth, which is his due ; 

My spirit is thine, the better part of me ! 

So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life, 

The prey of worms — my body being dead — 

The coward- conquest of a wretch's knife, 

Too base of thee to be remembered : 

The worth of that is that which it contains, 
And that is this, and this with thee remains. 

(74.) 

Against my Love shall be, as I am now, 

With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'erworn ; 

When hours have drained his blood and filled his brow 

With lines and wrinkles ; when his youthful morn 

Hath travelled on to Age's steepy night, 

And all those beauties whereof now he's king, 

Are vanishing or vanished out of sight, 

Stealing away the treasure of his Spring ; 

For such a time do I now fortify 

Against confounding Age's cruel knife, 

That he shall never cut from memory 

My sweet Love's beauty, tho' my Lover's life : 

His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, 
And they shall live, and he in them still green. 

(63.) - 



294 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Or I shall live your Epitaph to make, 
Or you survive when I in earth am rotten ; 
From hence your memory Death cannot take, 
Altho' in me each part will be forgotten : 
Your name from hence immortal life shall have, 
Tho' I, once gone, to all the world must die : 
The earth can yield me but a common grave, 
When you entombed in men's eyes shall lie : 
Your monument shall be my gentle verse, 
Which eyes not yet created shall o'er-read ; 
And tongues to be your being shall rehearse, 
When all the breathers of this world are dead ; 

You still shall live — such virtue hath my Pen — 
Where breath most breathes — even in the mouths of 
men. (si.) 

Thus the Poet speaks of his own death and the death 
of his friend, with a soul brimful of tender love as the 
summer dew-drop is of morning sun. No image of dis- 
grace darkens the retrospect of life ; all is purity and 
peace. The sonnets treasure up his better part, and they 
are to ' blossom in the dust ' with a breath of sweetness 
and memorial fragrance, when he lies in the ground. 
Here also is proof, I think, that he did not contemplate 
being known to the world as the writer of these sonnets 
when he composed this group. The work was a cherished 
love-secret on his part, all the dearer for the privacy. 
He thought of doing it, and he believed it would live, 
and that his friend and all the love between them should 
live on in it, but he himself was to steal off unidentified. 
In the last sonnet, he says : — 

( Your name from hence immortal life shall have, 
Tho' I, once gone, to all the world must die : 
The earth can yield me but a common grave, 
When yon entombed in men's eyes shall lie, 
Your monument shall be my gentle verse.' 

Clearly the sonnets were to be nameless, so far as the 
author was concerned, or Shakspeare must have been a 



NOT TO BE PUBLISHED AS SHAKSPEARE'S. 295 

sharer with his friend in both the immortal life and monu- 
ment ! Again, he says, when he is dead — 

' Do not so much as my poor name rehearse, 
My name be buried where my body is.' 

And in Sonnet 76 (p. 254), there is a kind of ' hush ! ' He 
speaks of his friend so plainly, that ' every word doth 
almost tell my name,' and from whom the Sonnets pro- 
ceeded, as if that were self-forbidden. He assures his 
friend of immortality, he speaks of having an interest in 
the verses, for they contain the 'better part' of himself 
consecrated to his friend, but he does not contemplate 
living in them by name. 

These sonnets have the authority of parting words, and 
that in a double sense ; for not only are they written 
when Shakspeare was ill, as I understand him, but they 
are written when he fancied the Southampton series was 
just upon finished. How, then, was the immortality to 
be conferred ? How was the monument erected by 
Shakspeare to be known as the Earl of Southampton's ? 
How were the many proud boasts to be fulfilled ? In this 
way I imagine. Sidney had called his prose work ' The 
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia,' and in all likelihood, 
when these sonnets were written, it was Shakspeare's 
intention, if they ever were published, to print them as 
the Earl of Southampton's. The fact of his having written 
in the Earl's name points to such a conclusion. This view 
serves to explain how it was that the Poet could care 
so little for fame ; seem so unconscious of the value of his 
own work, and yet make so many proud boasts of im- 
mortality. It is whilst fighting for his friend that we 
have this escape of consciousness, if it amounts to that, 
not whilst speaking of himself, nor whilst contemplating 
living by name, and the sonnets are to be immortal 
because they are the Earl of Southampton's, rather than 
on account of their being William Shakspeare's. 



296 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



DRAMATIC SONNETS. 

1601 1603. 

SOUTHAMPTON, IN THE TOWER, TO HIS COUNTESS. 

ALSO 

SHAKSPEAEE TO THE EARL IN PRISON, AND UPON 
HIS RELEASE. 



This is the story of the next group of sonnets : — The 
Earl of Southampton was, as is well known, tried for 
treason, along with the Earl of Essex, and condemned 
to die. His share in the wild attempt at rebellion was 
undoubtedly owing to his kinship, and to his friendship 
for the Earl. His youth, his friends, pleaded for him, and 
his life was spared. He was respited during the Queen's 
pleasure, after having been left for some weeks under 
sentence of execution. The sentence being at length 
commuted, he was kept a close prisoner until her Majesty's 
death. These three sonnets give us a dramatic represen- 
tation of the situation. They are spoken by the Earl to 
his Countess ; and they illustrate the facts and circum- 
stances of the time with the most literal exactness, the 
utmost truth of detail. The Earl is in the Tower, and the 
shadow of the prison-house creeps darkly over the page 
as we read. The imprisonment is personified as Time. 
Time holds the Earl tightly in his grip. Time has the 



THE TOWER OF LONDON. 207 

speaker in his keeping for a while — is absolute master for 
the moment. This is a very perfect image of imprison- 
ment. But, safely as Time holds him, surely as he has 
got him, the Earl defies Time still, and says, in spite of 
this newest, latest, strongest proof of his power, Time 
shall not boast that he changes. He will still be true to 
his love. ' Thy pyramids built up with newer might, to 
me are nothing novel, nothing strange ! ' That is, this 
latest proof of Time's power — he has had many in the 
course of his love — shall not impose on him in spite of 
its new shape and its arguments drawn from remote 
antiquity. 

'Thy pyramids' — the various towers of which the 
Tower is composed — ' built-up anew over my head, with 
this display of might which has shut me up within them, 
are only a former sight freshly dressed : I recognise my old 
foe in a novel mask. You are my old enemy, Time, the 
tyrant ! You have given me many a shrewd fall ; you 
have chafed my spirit sorely; but I still defy your worst. 
In vain you hold me as in. a chamber of torture, and show 
me the works you have done, the ruin you have wrought. 
In vain you point with lean finger to all these emblems of 
mortality and proofs of change, and foist upon me these 
signs of age. I see the place is rich in Records of times 
past, and the Registers of bygone things. I know our 
dates are brief compared with these of yours, but your 
shows and shadows do not intimidate me ; they will not 
make my spirit quail. I shall not waver or change in my 
love, however long my imprisonment may last. I defy 
both yourself and your taunts of triumph. I am not the 
slave of Time, and it is useless to show me your dates. I 
wonder neither at the present nor the past. I stand with 
a firm foot on that which is eternal, and can look calmly 
on these dissolving views of time. Whatsoever you may 
cut down, I shall be true, despite thy scythe and thee !' 
Thus the Earl meditates, shut up in the Tower of London, 



298 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the grey gloom and ghostly atmosphere of which may be 
felt in the first sonnet. The reader will perceive how 
perfect is this interior of the prison-house — this garner of 
Time's gleanings — if it be remembered that the Tower was 
then the great depository of the public Records and 
national Registers ; the Statute Bolls, Patent Bolls, Parlia- 
ment Bolls, Bulls, Pardons, Ordinances, Grants, Privy Seals> 
and antique Charters, dating back to the time of William 
the Norman. In no place could Time look more imposing 
and venerable, or be dressed with a greater show of autho- 
rity, than in the old Tower, standing up grey against the 
sky ; full of strange human relics, and guilty secrets, and 
awful memories, and the dust of some who are noblest, 
some who are vilest among our England's dead. 

The Poet makes only a stroke or two — the ' pyramids ' 
or turrets without ; the ' Begisters,' ' Becords,' and 
ancient dates within ; but there we have the Tower, and 
no picture could possess more truth of local hoary colour. 

It will give an added force to the speaker's tone of 
defiance if we remember what a grim reality the Tower 
was in those days, and what a lively terror to the 
Elizabethan imagination. A personification of Hving death ! 

The meditation of the next sonnet is very express. 
The Earl had endeavoured to marry Elizabeth Vernon 
for some years before he succeeded. He was compelled 
to marry her secretly at last. And in this sonnet he 
rejoices that they were married before his imprisonment 
occurred. If, he says, he had not effected his purpose in 
spite of the Queen, and his beloved were now unmarried 
to him, if his ' love ' had remained merely the ' child of 
state,' the creature of a Court, subject to its policy or the 
Queen's intention, it would, now he is taken away, have 
been the veriest bastard of Fortune — a child without a 
father. If we bear in mind the condition of Elizabeth 
Vernon previous to the stolen marriage, we shall see the 
dual meaning of this illustration ! Had it been so, he 



THE IRISH REBELLION. 299 

says, it would have continued subject to Time's love or 
hate, and might have fallen under his scythe in the most 
hap-hazard way ; a flower amongst flowers, or a weed 
among weeds, just as chance might have determined. 
But no, he has secured it from scorn and insult. He has 
built beyond the reach of accident. His beloved may be 
out in the world alone, but she wears the name of wife — 
nay, she is gathered up into his bosom by that grand in- 
clusive way in which the sonnet personifies the ' love ' in 
its oneness. ' It was builded far from accident ' — the 
marriage made that sure ! and now, as things are, it ' suf- 
fers not ' in the falsely ; smiling pomp ' of Court favour ; is 
not compelled to seek Court preferment, is no more ex- 
posed to the changeful weather, the sun and shower of 
royal caprice ; nor does it fall under — cannot come within 
reach of- — that ' blow of thralled discontent ' to which the 
' inviting time ' calls ' our fashion ' ; the young nobles, 
England's chivalry, who at that moment were being 
summoned to the aid of Mountjoy in Ireland. 

No apter image of Ireland in the year 1601 could be 
conceived than this ' thralled discontent ' gives us. 

Camden says the affairs of that country were in a ' lean- 
ing posture,' tending to a ; dejection,' and the Spaniard 
seized the occasion to make one more push, and if pos- 
sible, topple over English rule in Ireland. It was pro- 
claimed that Elizabeth was, by several censures of the 
Bishop of Eome, deprived of her crown. The spirit of 
rebellion sprang up full-statured at the promise of help 
from Spain ; and < thralled discontent ' once more wel- 
comed the deliverer. Eumour came flying in all haste, 
and babbling with all her tongues. It was an 6 inviting 
time' indeed to the young gallants — the Earl's old comrades 
— who were fast taking horse and ship once more. The 
prose parallel to the sonnet will be found in a letter to Mr. 
Winwood from Mr. Secretary Cecil, Oct. 4, 1601 x He 

1 WinwoocFs Memorials, vol. i. p. 351. 



300 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

writes, ' on the 25th of last month there landed between 
five and six thousand Spaniards in the province of Munster, 
commanded by Don Juan d'Aguila, who was general of 
the Spanish army at Bluett. The Lord Deputy (Mountjoy) 
is hasting, with the best power he can make, and her Ma- 
jesty is sending over six thousand men, with all things 
thereto belonging, which, being added to eighteen thou- 
sand already in that kingdom, you must think do put 
this realm to a wanton charge.' Of course the sonnet 
does not make the Earl exult that he cannot follow to join 
his old friends in the two campaigns which ended in 
Mountjoy's leading captive the rebel Tyrone to the feet 
of Elizabeth. That would have been undramatic, un- 
natural. He only says that, shut up in prison as he is, 
his love does not 'fall under the blow' whereto the time 
calls so invitingly. It has no fear of policy, that heretic 
in love and love-matters ! which, after all — and here is an 
ominous hint, perhaps of the Queen's age — works on a 
short lease, or a lease of short-numbered hours. No ! it 
stands all alone — completely isolated from the strokes and 
shocks of time and change in the outer world. He sits 
at the centre of the wild whirl— or rather he is just where 
things stand still — and ' hugely politic,' it is too ! His love 
' nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers ' of the 
Court world. But it has an inward life of its own ; is 
firm as the centre ; steadfast and true to the end. To the 
truth of his assertions he calls his witnesses, and weird 
witnesses they are ; for, being where the speaker is, we 
get a glimpse of Tower Hill through the window bars, and 
see the solemn procession ; the sawclusted stage with its 
black velvet drapery of death ; the headsman in his black 
mask, his axe in his hand, and all the scenery and cir- 
cumstance of that grim way they had of going up to God. 
The speaker calls for witnesses, the spirits of those political 
plotters, whose heads fell from the block, and whose bodies 
moulder within the old walls. The ' fools ' who had been 



THE CLOUD OF WITNESSES. 301 

the sport of the time, he calls them, who lived to commit 
crime, but died nobly at last — made a pious end, as we say. 

Shakspeare had evidently remarked that, as a rule, 
those who were condemned to die on the scaffold died 
' good,' no matter what the life had been : it was the custom 
for them to make an edifying end. Stowe relates how 
Sir Charles Danvers mounted the scaffold and ' put off his 
gown and doublet in a most cheerful manner, rather like 
a bridegroom than a prisoner appointed for death, and he 
then prayed very devoutly.' The allusion is no doubt more 
particularly directed to Essex and his companions, who 
had died so recently ; Essex having been executed on the 
inner hill of the Tower. The ' fools of time ' may give 
us the Poet's estimate of Essex's attempt. He was one of 
those who had lived to reach the criminal's end, but who 
' died for goodness' in the sense that he, like Danvers, died 
devoutly, and took leave of life with a redeeming touch 
of nobleness. But the manner of the death is still more 
obviously aimed at — the dying in public, lifted up for the 
view of the gaping crowd, and making sport for the time, 
by giving a bloody zest to a popular holiday. 

The next sonnet still carries on the idea of imprison- 
ment, and the external image of bearing the canopy is in 
opposition to his present limitation in the Tower. Con- 
fined as he is, and limited to so narrow a space for living, 
he asks, were it anything to him if he bore the whole 
canopy of the heavens outside, c honouring the outward ' 
with his externals, filled the world with the fame of his 
doings, made the heavens, as it were, his arch of triumph, 
or ' laid great bases for eternity,' as some do, and prove 
them to be ' more short than waste or ruining ? ' Has he 
not seen how it went with many who sought Court favour 
and fickle fortune — Essex, for example — the 4 dwellers on 
form and favour ' — has he not seen how they lost all, and 
more — this life, perhaps next — by paying down their very 
souls for glittering need-nots ; foregoing all the simple 



302 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

savour of life for a ' compound sweet,' adulterated with 
poison ? 

These are the words of one standing apart, thrust 
aside, who can now watch how the game goes, with its 
tricks and intrigues ; its fervours and failures. He can 
see how much reality the players forego for the sake of 
their illusions ; see what they trample under foot in their 
visionary pursuit, and how they stumble into the ditch, 
with foolish eyes fixed on their stars ! The pitiful 
thrivers in their gazing spent ! No. He is ambitious for 
none of these things. Let his beloved but accept the 
humble offerings of his love, he cares for no other 
success. His love for her is mixed with no secondary 
ambition. Cooped up as he is, thrust out of service, he 
has all if he have her safely folded up in his heart : she is 
his all-in-all, and he asks for a ' mutual render, only me 
for thee ! ' The sonnet ends with a defiance which, I 
think, clenches my conclusion. Camden tells us that 
amongst the confederates of Essex, one of them, whilst 
in prison, turned informer, and revealed what had taken 
place at the meetings held in the Earl of Southampton's 
house, though he, the historian, could never learn who 
it was. In the last two lines of the sonnet, the Earl 
flings his disdain at the ' suborned Informer,' and com- 
paring himself with so base a knave, he feels that he is 
truer than such a fellow, although the world calls him a 
traitor ; and when most impeached (for treason), he is 
least in such a loyalist's control. The difference betwixt 
their two natures is so vast, not to be bridged in life or 
death. We have only to remember how recently the 
Earl of Southampton had been impeached as a traitor, 
and those two lines must speak to us with the power of 
his living voice ! He concludes his prison-thoughts by 
hurling his defiance at the man whose treachery led to 
this imprisonment. 



LOVE DEFIES TIME OR IMPRISONMENT. 303 



THE EARL IN PRISON ADDRESSES ELIZABETH VERNON, 
NOW LADY SOUTHAMPTON. 

No ; Time, thou shall not boast that I do change ! 
Thy pyramids, built up with newer might, 
To me are nothing novel — nothing strange — 
They are but dressings of a former sight : 
Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire 
What thou dost foist upon us that is old, 
And rather make them born to our desire 
Than think that we before have heard them told : 
Thy Eegisters and thee I both defy, 
Not wondering at the present, nor the past, 
For thy Records and what we see doth lie, 
Made more or less by thy continual haste ! 
This I do vow, and this shall ever be, 
I will be true despite thy scythe and thee. 

(123.) 

If my dear love were but the child of State, 

It might for Fortune's bastard ! be unfathered 

As subject to Time's love, or to Time's hate ; 

Weeds among weeds, or flowers with flowers gathered : 

No, it was builded far from accident ! 

It suffers not in smiling pomp, 2 nor falls 

Under the blow of thralled Discontent, 

Whereto the inviting time our Fashion calls : 

1 'Fortune's Bastard,'' in the sense of being nameless ; an illegitimate child 
having no name by inheritance. The Poet speaks of ' nameless bastardy ' in 
' Lucreece/ and in the ' Two Gentlemen of Verona/ ' That's as much as to 
say bastard virtues, that indeed know not their fathers name, and therefore 
have no name." If the Earl's 'love ' had only been the child of State, the 
marriage would not have taken place at all, and it would now have been a 
nameless bastard of Fortune. And, as such, his love would have remained 
subject to ' Time's love or to Time's hate/ as it was before his marriage. 

2 It suffers not in the smiling pomp of the Court at home, nor falls under 
the blow of rebellion abroad. So the Duke in 'As You Like It/ speaks of 
his court life as a life of 'painted pomp.'' Also Anne Bullen, in ' Henry VIIL, 
says of Queen Katherine, l Much better she ne'er had known pomp, 1 mean- 
ing royalty and its immediate surroundings. l See Csesar ! 0, behold how 
pomp is followed/ exclaims Cleopatra; and Lear cries, 'Take physic, 



304 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

It fears not Policy l — that Heretic 

Which works on leases of short-numbered hours — 

But all alone stands hugely politic, 

That it nor grows with heat, nor drowns with showers : 2 
To this I witness call the fools of Time 
Which die for goodness who have lived for crime. 

(.24.) 

Were it ought to me I bore the canopy, 
With my extern the outward honouring ? 
Or laid great bases for eternity, 
Which prove more short than waste or ruining ? 
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour 
Lose all and more by paying too much rent ? 
For compound sweet foregoing simple savor ; 
Pitiful thrivers in their gazing spent ! 
No ! let me be obsequious in thy heart, 3 
And take thou my oblation, poor but free, 

1 i It fears not policy. 1 It had been the Queen's policy, pursued for years, to 
prevent the marriage of Southampton and Elizabeth Vernon. 

2 ' That it nor grows with heat nor drowns with showers.' 

Steevens's comment on this line is, ' Though a building may be drowned, i.e. 
deluged with rain, it can hardly grow under the influence of heat. I would 
read gloivs.'' The Earl was not speaking of a building, but of his ' dear love/ 
which had been builded or cemented by his marriage. So, in l Antony 
and Cleopatra, l the cement of our love, to keep it builded.' He did not 
mean that his love had become a building. We speak of the bees building 
their cells, and of the comb growing in size, but we do not call the honey a 
building. The building up of love is a favourite expression of Shakspeare's : 

{ And ruined love, when it is built anew, 
Grows fairer than at first.' — Sonnet 119. 

1 Shall love in building grow so ruinate.' 

Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

1 But the strong base and building of my love 
Is as the very centre to the earth.' — Troilus and Cressida. 

The obtuseness and impertinence of this critic are at times insufferable. To 
see him in Shakspeare's company at all causes a general sense of uncomfort- 
ableness, such as Launce may have felt respecting the manners of his dog Crab. 

3 So Falstaff to Mrs. Ford, in the ' Merry Wives,' ( I see you are obse- 
quious in yolir love/ 



SOUTHAMPTON'S 'LOVE' THE < CHILD OF STATE.' 305 

Which is not mix'd with seconds, 1 knows no art, 

But mutual render, only me for thee ! 

Hence, thou suborned Informer, a true soul 
When most impeached stands least in thy control ! 

(125.) 

Shakspeare might have been the speaker in the three 
foregoing sonnets without any conflict with some of the 
historic circumstances to which they refer — such as the 
Earl's imprisonment and the Irish war. But had he been 
the speaker in those sonnets which confess a changing, 
ranging, false and fickle spirit, that had so often and so 
sadly tried the person addressed, he could scarcely have 
been as heroic in asserting; his unswerving steadfastness 
of affection, and hurled at Time his defiant determination 
to be eternally true. Time might not ' boast,' but Shak- 
speare would be boasting with huge swagger at a most 
sorrowful unseasonable period. He might fairly enough 
defy Time, and all State-policy, to alienate him from his 
friend. But his ' dear love,' his friendship, was not the 
4 child of State ' in any shape, therefore he could not speak 
of its being only the ' child of State.' Shakspeare gene- 
rally uses State in the most regal sense. Hamlet the 
Prince was the first hope and foremost flower of the State. 
So, in ' King Henry VIH.,' we have ' an old man broken 
by the storms of State' Nor was State-policy likely to be 
exerted for any such purpose in his case. He might, as 
most probably he did, have visited the Earl in the Tower, 
and there moralized on the doings of Time, and told him, 
to his face, he was an old impostor, after all, who tried to 
play tricks with appearances on those who were close 
prisoners there in his keeping. But his ' love ' could not 
be an ; unfathered bastard of Fortune ' in consequence 
of being only the ' Child of State.' It could not have 

1 Mix'd with seconds." 1 So in 'King Lear/ 'No seconds ? all myself? ' 

Act iv. sc. 6. 



'306 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

been builded far from ' accident ' when so terrible a one 
had just occurred to the Earl. He might have been in- 
wardly glad that his friend could not get away to the Irish 
wars, and within range of the impending blow of ' thralled 
Discontent.' But he could not have congratulated the 
Earl on his imprisonment being the cause why the friend- 
ship did not come under that blow. It will be observed 
that there is a self-gratulatory tone in the sonnets. Nor 
could his love, his friendship have suffered in ' smiling 
pomp ;' and if it might, it was not for Shakspeare to say 
such a thing to his fettered friend, doomed to a life-long 
imprisonment. Nor could he, by his own showing, have 
said that his love feared not Policy, the Heretic, for in the 
107th sonnet he tells us how much he had feared. He 
was filled with fears for the Earl in prison, and trembled 
for the life supposed to be forfeited to a ' confined doom.' 
Clearly, then, he could not be thus loftily defiant of the 
worst that had happened, or could happen, on behalf of 
another, and that other his dear friend who was sitting in 
the very shadow of death ! The defiance and the boasts 
would have been altogether unnatural from Shakspeare's 
mouth. How could his love stand 'all alone' and be 
' hugely politic?' One would have thought, too, that his 
love would have been ready enough to ' drown with showers,' 
had he been speaking of his beloved friend in such perilous 
circumstances. Moreover, it would be exceedingly strange 
for Shakspeare to call the 'fools of Time' as his witnesses. 
What for ? Save to show what a fool he was in making 
such a singular declaration of his enduring love. He 
could have made no such vast and vague a public appeal 
to prove the truth of his private affection. Then, with 
the Earl bound hand and foot and in great mental agony, 
as he must have been, is it to be supposed that Shak- 
speare would fix his gaze on himself and his own limiting 
circumstances ? ' Were it ought tome I bore the canopy.' 
Why, what would it be to his friend, the Earl? Such 



SOUTHAMPTON'S FIGHT WITH TIME AND FORTUNE. 307 

reference to himself — such a c look at me' would have 
been the veriest mockery to his poor friend ; such a dis- 
course on the benefits of being without a tail would have 
been a vulgar insult. If Shakspeare were speaking thus 
of himself, the reader's concern would be for Southampton ! 
But enough said : it is not Shakspeare who speaks in 
these sonnets. It is the same speaker who has so long 
sustained the fight with ' Time' and c Fortune,' which have 
overthrown him at last, although when prostrate on the 
ground, he will not yield. The speaker, who, in sonnet 29 
(p. 166), feels himself to be in ' disgrace with Fortune,' and 
men's eyes are turned from him. In sonnet 37 (p. 168) he is 
made lame, is disabled, or shut out of service, by Fortune's 
6 dearest' or most excessive spite. In sonnet 90 (p. 246), the 
same person is still pursued by the malice of Fortune, 
which is bent on crossing his deeds. It is the same 
speaker, the unlucky scapegrace, the noble ' ne'er-do- 
weel,' who, in sonnet 111 (p. 270), asks his much-suffering, 
more-loving friend to chide this ' Fortune' that has 
been to so great an extent the guilty goddess, the cause 
of his harmful doings and his ' blenches,' or starts from 
rectitude. It is the same person on whose behalf 
Shakspeare makes such a prolonged fight with Time 
and evil Fortune, and in some of the personal sonnets 
speaks so proudly of the power of his verse to give him 
an immortality to right this wrong of time. At first 
sight a reader might fancy some of those sonnets to 
have been written after a visit to the Tavern, when the 
canary had added a cubit to the Poet's stature, and he 
talked loftily for so modest a man. But he had a stronger 
incentive ; a wilder wine was awork within him when 
he made these sounding promises of immortality. Not 
flattery nor the spirit of the grape were his inspiration, but 
a passionate feeling of injustice and wrong, and a determi- 
nation to make his ' love ' triumph over time and enmity, 
and all the opposition of a malevolent fortune.. This is 



308 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the man who speaks in the foregoing sonnets, and it 
will be seen that the personal theory has not the shadow 
of a chance when compared with the dramatic one. It 
cannot gauge these sonnets ; does not go to the bottom 
in any one of the deeper places. The dramatic version, 
with Southampton for speaker, alone will sound the 
depths, and make out the sense. It penetrates, informs, 
and illumines the dimmest nook with a light that we 
can see by, whereas the personal rendering, in all its ex- 
plorations, only leads us into the middle of a maze, and 
there leaves us in the dark. 

If we would listen to the words of Shakspeare himself 
speaking to the Earl of Southampton in prison, we shall 
hear him in the 115th sonnet : — 

SHAKSPEARE TO THE EARL IN PRISON. 

Those lines that I before have writ do lie ; 
Even those that said I could not love you dearer ! 
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why 
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer! 
But reckoning time, whose million'd accidents 
Creep in 'twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, 
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp'st intents, 
Divert strong minds to the course of altering things ; 
Alas ! why, fearing of Time's tyranny, 
Might I not then say, ' Now I love you best ? ' 
When I was certain o'er incertainty, 
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest ? 
Love is a babe ; then might I not say so, 
To give full growth to that which still doth grow. 

(115.) 

These lines tell us that Shakspeare had before said 
he loved his friend so much it was impossible for him to 
love the Earl more dearly. Because, at the time of saying 
so, he could neither see nor foresee reason why that flame 
of his love should afterwards burn clearer, or soar up 
more strongly. But this new and more perilous position 



A NEW APPEAL TO THE POET'S LOVE. 309 

of his friend serves to make him pour forth his love in a 
larger measure, and he now sees why he ought not to 
have said he could not love him more. The shadow has 
fallen on his friend ; the waters of affliction have gone 
over him, and he loves him more than ever in his latest 
calamity. He feels that he ought not to have boasted of 
his love even when he felt most certain over uncertainty, 
because the Earl has been so marked a victim of ' Time's 
tyranny.' Even when the present was crowned in the 
Earl's marriage, he ought still to. have doubted of the 
rest, and not made any such assertion. The lines have an 
appearance of Shakspeare's taking up the pen. once more 
after he had looked upon the expression of his affection 
in sonnets as finished when he celebrated the marriage of 
Southampton. Now he has found a fresh cause for speaking 
of that love, to which a stronger appeal has been made. 
The reason, as here stated, ' love is a babe,' sounds some- 
what puerile, but it is the Poet's way of making light of 
himself; the personal sonnet being sent merely in attend- 
ance on the three dramatic ones, which were the messen- 
gers of importance, whilst this was only their servant. 
It is a part of my theory that Shakspeare did not mean 
to write passionate personal sonnets, and that the dra- 
matic method was adopted partly for the suppression of 
himself. He does not seek to make the most of this 
occasion, and give adequate expression to such feelings as 
he must have had when the Earl was condemned to die. 
His friend in relation to his Countess, not himself, was his 
object. Thus, while he makes many of his personal sonnets 
into pretty patterns of ingenious thought, the others are 
all aglow with dramatic fire and feeling, only to be 
fully felt when we have learned who the speakers are. 
Here his own warmth of heart is suppressed, to be put 
into cordial loving words, for the forlorn and desolate 
wife of his dear friend. 

It is one of Boaden's arguments that these sonnets cannot 



310 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

have been addressed to the Earl of Southampton, because 
the Poet has not written in the direct personal way on the 
passing events of the Earl's life. He asks, with a taunt, 
how did the Poet feel upon the rash daring of Essex ? 
Had he no soothing balm to shed upon the agonies of his 
trial, his sentence, his imprisonment, bitter as death? 
Could his eulogist find no call upon him for secure con- 
gratulation when James had restored him to liberty ? 'We 
should expect Shakspeare to tell him, in a masterly tone, 
that calamity was the nurse of great spirits ; that his afflic- 
tions had been the source of his fame ; that mankind never 
could have known the resources of his mighty mind, if he 
had not been summoned to endure disgrace, and to gaze 
undauntedly on death itself.' Here, however, the critic 
has only copied Daniel. These are that Poet's sentiments 
expressed in the direct personal way. Shakspeare being a 
great Dramatic Poet, and a close personal friend of the 
Earl, wrote in his own way, or according to that friend's 
wish, expressed years before. It did not suit him, nor the 
plan of his work, to wail and weep personally. Was he 
not the man of men, who always kept himself out of sight? 
And is not the closest touch of hearts where none can see ? 
It suited all the persons concerned that he should use the 
Earl's name, and try to infuse into the Earl's nature some- 
thing of his own impassioned majesty of soul, so that the 
Earl might unconsciously feel strengthened in Shak- 
speare's strength, and be able to look on life through his 
eyes who saw with so lustrous a clearness. Thus, the Poet 
could instruct his friend, and stand over him as an invisible 
teacher, when the Earl only saw the writer of sonnets 
labouring for his amusement ; and to us he speaks over the 
shoulder of his friend. This was Shakspeare's dramatic 
way with all whom he has taught — all whom he yet teaches. 
There are, however, some important allusions in this 
sonnet ! The reference to Time changing ' decrees of 
Kings' no doubt includes the change in that decree 



SOUTHAMPTON IS SET FEEE. 311 

which had doomed the Earl to death. And I think the 
attempt of Essex to create a revolution, or some great 
change, is immistakeably meant in the line that speaks of 
Time diverting ' strong minds to the course of altering 
things ! ' If so, it also shows something of the amaze- 
ment with which Shakspeare had witnessed so futile a 
diversion on the part of a strong — possibly he thought 
head-strong — mind to the course of altering things that 
were so firmly fixed. He looks upon the futile, foolish 
assault as a mental aberration, and one of the accidents — 
not to say wonders — of Time ! This line is one of those 
personal and precious particulars with which the sonnets 
abound, and for which all the rest were written. They 
are too solid to be dissipated into that vapour of vague ge- 
neralities which some of the interpreters so much delight 
in, but in which thin air the rich poetic life of Shakspeare 
could not have breathed. 

Sonnet 107 will show us that, in spite of the dramatic 
method adopted by Shakspeare in writing of the Earl, he 
did find a call for secure congratulation when James had 
restored the Earl to his liberty. 

SHAKSPEARE'S GREETING TO THE EARL OX HIS RELEASE 
FROM THE TOWER. 

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul 
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, 
Can yet the lease of my true love control, 
Supposed as forfeit to a confined Doom ! l 
The mortal Moon 2 hath her Eclipse endured, 
And the sad Augurs mock their own presage ; 
Incertainties now crown themselves assured, 
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age ; 3 

1 ( Confined doom/ i.e., a doom defined by boundaries. In ' King- Lear ' 
we have the ' confined deep.' 

2 ( Mortal Moon.'' The Queen is personified as the moon, cold and chaste, 
in the allegory of a l Midsummer Night's Dream.' Our poet calls the eyes 
of his Lucrece ' mortal stars? 

3 ' When King James came to be King of England; the kingdom was in entire 



312 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Now with the drops of this most balmy time 
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, 
Since spite of him I'll live in this poor rhyme, 
While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes, 
And thou in this shalt find thy monument, 
When Tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent. 1 

(107.) 

There can be no mistake, doubt, or misgiving here ! 
This sonnet contains evidence beyond question — proof 
positive and unimpeachable — that the man addressed by 
Shakspeare in his personal sonnets has been condemned in 
the first instance to death, and afterwards to imprisonment 
for life, and escaped his doom through the death of the 
Queen. 

It tells us that the Poet had been filled with fears for 
the fate of his friend, and that his instinct, as well as the 
presentiment of the world in general, had foreshadowed 
the worst for the Earl, as it dreamed on things to come. 
He sadly feared the life of his friend — the Poet's lease of 
his true love — was forfeited, if not to immediate death, 
to a ' confined doom,' or a definite, a life-long imprisonment. 
The painful uncertainty is over now. The Queen is dead 
— the ' Mortal Moon hath her eclipse endured.' 2 Cynthia 
was one of Elizabeth's most popular poetical names. 

peace within, and in martial state and full of honour and reputation abroad.' 
A Detection of the Court and State of England, by Roger Coke, vol. i. p. 29. 
Likewise Cranmer, in 'Henry VIII.,' points out the peace for James I., which 
is one of the assured blessings of Elizabeth's reign, ' Peace, Plenty, Love 
shall then be his, and like a vine grow to him.' 

1 This is the last of the Southampton Sonnets, as they have come to us. 
Shakspeare's warfare with Time and Fortune on his friend's behalf is ended ; 
the victory is won, he has found peace at last. There is a final farewell touch 
in the concluding iteration of the immortality so often promised. The Earl 
shall have a monument in the sonnets now finished, when the Abbey tombs 
have crumbled into dust. When he wrote these last lines, the Poet could 
not have contemplated leaving the monument without a name. Hitherto, 
however, the Earl has only found a tomb. 

% So Antony says of Cleopatra, 'Alack, our teirene Moon is now 
eclipsed.' 



THE DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 313 

Aii image of maiden purity to her Majesty, in which 
some of the Wits also saw the symbol of changefulness. 
Change of moon brings change of weather, too ! His love 
is refreshed by the drops of this most balmy time, the 
tears of joy ; his lease of love is renewed. Those who 
had prophesied the worst can now laugh at their own 
fears and mock their unfulfilled predictions. The new 
King calls the Earl from a prison to a seat of honour. 
As Wilson words it, ' the Earl of Southampton, covered 
long with the ashes of great Essex his ruins, was sent 
for from the tower, and the King looked upon him with 
a smiling countenance.' 'Peace proclaims olives of end- 
less age.' Our Poet evidently hopes that the Earl's life 
will share in this new dawn of gladness and promised 
peace of the nation. He can exult over death this time. 
It is his turn to triumph now. And his friend shall find 
a monument in his verse which shall exist when the 
crests of tyrants have crumbled and their brass-mounted 
tombs have passed from sight. 

This sonnet is a pregnant instance of Shakspeare's twin- 
bearing thought, his inclusive way of writing, which 
could not have been appreciated in the sonnets hitherto, 
because they have never been ' made flesh ' for us to 
grasp. The sonnet carries double. It blends the Poet's 
private feeling for his friend with the public fear for the 
death of the Queen. The ' Augurs ' had contemplated 
that event with mournful forebodings, and prophesied 
changes and disasters. The natural fact, of which this 
mortal ' eclipse ' is the image, is illustrated in 'King Lear.' 
6 1 am thinking, brother,' says Edmund, ' of a prediction 
I read the other day what should follow these eclipses.'' 
The prediction having been made by his father, Gloster ; 
' These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no 
good to us,' &c. (act i. sc. ii.) 

But it has passed over happily for the nation as joy- 
fully for the Poet. Instead of his friend yielding to Death, 



314 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Death — surely in the death of the Queen ? — ' subscribes,' 
that is, submits to the speaker. 

Shakspeare himself gives us a hint, in his dramatic way, 
that he was present at the trial of the Earl, for he has, in 
a well-known speech of Othello's, adopted the manner and 
almost the words with which Bacon opened his address 
on that memorable occasion : — ' I speak not to simple 
men,' said Bacon, but to 'prudent, grave, and wise peers.' 
And this is obviously echoed in Othello's ' Most potent, 
grave, and reverend signiors.' The manner of address 
and the rhythm of the words are the same ; the emphasis 
has in it more likeness to personal character than to an 
accident. And we may be sure that our Poet was one 
of the first to greet his friend at the open door of his pri- 
son l with that welcoming smile of pure sunshine, all the 
sweeter for the sadness past, and press his hand with all 
his heart in the touch. In this sonnet we have his written 
gratulation of the Earl on his release. It proves his sym- 
pathy with him in misfortune, and it proves also that he 
had been writing about the Earl. For we cannot suppose 
' this poor rhyme ' to mean this single sonnet, but the 
series which this sonnet concluded. 

It maybe asked, did Shakspeare rejoice in the death of 
the Queen ? I do not say that he did, in any personal 
sense. His exultation was for his friend's freedom. 
Had he summed up on the subject in a balance-sheet, 
as Chatter ton clicl on the death of Lord Mayor Beckford, 
he would have been glad the Queen was dead, by the 
gain of Southampton. But I do think Shakspeare looked 
upon her as a tyrant in all marriage matters, and not 
without cause. Her Majesty appears not only to have 
made up her mind to remain single herself, when getting on 



1 We may likewise be sure that Shakspeare had Southampton's good 
word in securing the patronage of James, and the privilege accorded by- 
Letters Patent to his own theatrical company, directly after the King had 
reached London. 



MAIDS OF HONOUR IN LOVE. 315 

for sixty, but also to prevent her maids from being married. 
What the Queen's treatment was of her maids that wished 
to marry, we may gather from the letter of Mr. Fenton to 
John Harington, 1 in which, speaking of the Lady Mary 
Howard, he tells us that the Queen will not let her be 
married, saying, ' I have made her my servant, and she 
will make herself my mistress,' which she shall not. More- 
over, she 'must not entertain ' her lover in any conversation, 
but shun his company, and be careful how she attires her 
person, not to attract my Lord the Earl. The story runs 
that the Lady Mary had a gorgeous velvet dress, sprinkled 
with gold and pearl. The Queen thought it richer than her 
own. One day she sent privately for the dress, put it on, and 
appeared wearing it before her ladies in waiting. It was 
too short for her Majesty, and looked exceedingly unsuited 
to her. She asked the ladies how they liked her new- 
fangled dress, and they had to get out of their difficulty 
as best they could. Then she asked Lady Mary if she 
did not think it was too short and unbecoming. The poor 
girl agreed with her Majesty that it was. Whereupon the 
Queen said if it was too short for her, it was too fine for 
the owner, and the dress was accordingly put out of sight. 
Sir J. Harington relates how the Queen, when in a 
pleasant mood, would ask the ladies around her chamber 
if they loved to think of marriage ? The wisely- wary 
ones would discreetly conceal their liking in the matter. 
The simple ones would unwittingly rise at the bait, and 
were caught and cruelly dangling on the hook the mo- 
ment after, at which her Majesty enjoyed fine sport. We 
might cite other instances in which the attendants con- 
gratulated themselves in the words of Mr. John Stanhope, 
who, in writing to Lord Talbot 2 on the subject of Essex's 
marriage, and the Queen's consequent fury, says, ' God be 
thanked, she does not strike all she threats ! ' Mr. Fenton 

1 Harington's Nugce Antiquce, vol. i. p. 233. 
2 Lodge's Illustrations, 1838, ii. 422. 



316 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

tells us that her Majesty ' chides in small matters, in 
such wise as to make these fair maids often cry and 
bewail in piteous sort.' The fair Mrs. Bridges, the lady 
at Court with whom the Earl of Essex was said to be in 
love, is reported to have felt the weight of her Majesty's 
displeasure, not only in words of anger, but in double-fisted 
blows. Elizabeth Vernon appears to have been driven 
nearly to the verge of madness, and a good deal of South- 
ampton's trouble arose from the Queen's persistent opposi- 
tion to their marriage. Some recent writers seem to think 
that there ought to have been neither marrying nor giving in 
marriage, if such was her Majesty's virgin pleasure. Shak- 
speare did not think so ; he looked on life in a more na- 
tural light. It was his most cherished wish to get the earl 
married, and the Queen had been implacable in thwarting 
it ; this made them take opposite sides. I like to find the 
Poet standing by the side of his friend, even though he 
speaks bitterly of the Queen as a 'heretic' to love, does 
not express one word of sorrow when the ' mortal moon ' 
suffers final eclipse, and lets fly his last arrow in the air 
over the old Abbey where the royal tyrants lie low, with 
a twang on the bow-string unmistakeably vengeful. 

We know that the poet was reproached for his silence 
on the death of the Queen. In Chettle's 'Englande's 
Mourning Garment' (1603), he is taken to task under the 
name of ' Melicert.' 

i Nor doth the silver-tonged Melicert 

Drop from his honied Muse one sable teare 
To mourn her death that graced his desert, 
And to his laies opened her royall eare, 
Shepheard, remember our Elizabeth, 
And sing her rape done by that Tarquin, Death.' 

But the shepherd had his own private reasons for being 
deaf and dumb ; he remembered another Elizabeth. 



317 



THE 



MSS. BOOK OF THE SOUTHAMPTON 
SONNETS. 



If the reader will refer back to sonnet 77 (p. 241), 
and study it awhile, he will see how a large number of 
the sonnets were written for Southampton. Hitherto 
the commentators have assumed that Shakspeare's friend 
had presented him with a table-book ! But the sonnet is 
not composed either on receiving or making a gift ; no 
such motive or stand-point can possibly be found in it. The 
subject is the old one of warring against Time, and the 
writer is at the moment writing in a book from which he 
draws one of a series of reflections in illustration of his 
thought. The mirror, he says, will tell the Earl how his 
'beauties wear ; ' and the dial will show him Time's stealthy 
progress to eternity. ' This book ' will also teach its lesson. 
Its vacant leaves will take the mind's imprint ; and he ad- 
vises his friend to write down his own thoughts in these 
' waste blanks,' and they will be a living memory of the 
past, one day — just as the mirror is a reflector to-day. If 
he will do this, the habit — ' these offices ' — will profit him 
mentally, and much enrich the book. 

Evidently this is a book for writing in, and as evidently 
Shakspeare is then writing in it. Moreover it has ' vacant 
leaves ' — ' waste blanks ; ' therefore it has pages that have 
been filled. And to the contents of these written pages 



318 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the Poet alludes : ' Of this book this learning may'st 
thou taste ; ' that is, the Earl will find in it other illustra- 
tions of the writer's present theme, which is youth's 
transiency and life's fleetness. This book, then, has 
been enriched by the Poet's writing ; but if Southampton 
will take the pen in hand, and also write in the book, 
it will become much richer than it is now. ' This 
book ' shows that it is in Shakspeare's hand, but it 
does not belong to him. ' Thy book ' proves that it is 
the Earl's property. In this book, I doubt not, most 
of the Southampton sonnets were written, just as contri- 
butions may be made to an album, and in this particular 
sonnet we find the Poet actually writing in it. Now, there 
is every reason to conclude that this book is the same as 
the Earl has parted with in the following sonnet, and so I 
print the sonnet by itself, although it belongs, by its plead- 
ing and defensive tone, to those which treat of the last re- 
conciliation of the lovers. It is of more value in another 
aspect, should it be the MS. book of the Southampton 
series, for it may have important bearings on the publi- 
cation of Shakspeare's sonnets. It is in reply to an 
expostulation. The Earl, for he is the speaker, has given 
away a book. This book was, in the first place, a gift 
from his mistress, and, in the second place, it has been used 
as a record of her, for the purpose of scoring and keeping 
count, as it were, of his love — hence the comparison of 
it with 4 tallies,' which were used for scoring accounts. 

This book, given to the speaker by the person addressed, 
and used as a record of his love, a retainer of her image, 
has been parted with ; perhaps, the lady thought, foolishly. 
The Earl makes his most complimentary defence, or the 
Poet does so for him. Her true tables are within his 
brain, she is there written, or engraved to all eternity ; 
or, at least — here the writer was recalled by the physical 
fact — until brain and heart shall crumble into dust, her 
real record will remain there ; a something that can never 



ELIZABETH VERNON'S SIIAKSPEARE-ALBUM. 319 

be effaced, never given away. The gift of gifts was her- 
self, not her gift-book, and the true tables are not that 
book, but his living brain. That 'poor retention' could not 
hold his love for her, nor does he need ' tallies,' her ' dear 
love to score,' therefore he made bold to give away the 
book, the tallies which contained his love-reckonings, 
the memorandum-book which retained her, as is cun- 
ningly suggested, on purpose to trust his memory and 
mental record all the more. If he had kept such a thing 
to remind him of her, it would have been a kind of re- 
proach to himself, as it would charge him with being 
forgetful, so he has just dispensed with this artificial 
memory, and henceforth will depend on his natural one 
alone ! Besides, it was altogether incapable of holding 
his large love ! 

This book was something very special for a sonnet 
to be written on the subject of its having been given 
away. The purpose to which it had been devoted is 
likewise as choice and particular. Shakspeare was not 
in the least likely to fill a book with sonnets about the 
Earl and then give it away, when they had been written 
for the Earl, nor did he keep ' tallies ' to score the Earl's 
dear love for himself. The sonnet supports my reading 
in each single point, and by its total weight of evidence. 
The ' tallies, thy dear love to score,' were none other than 
the leaves of this gift-book, in which the Poet wrote his 
dramatic sonnets on the love of his friend for Elizabeth 
Vernon. The book had been a present from Mistress 
Vernon to the Earl of Southampton ; his parting with it 
was one of her grievances ; and Shakspeare had enriched 
its value with sonnets in his own hand-writing. 

It may have been a table-book, such as were then in use, 
elegantly bound for a dainty hand. Aubrey, speaking of 
Sir Philip Sidney, says, ' my great uncle, Mr. T. Browne, 
remembered him ; and said that he was wont to take his 
table-book out of his pocket and write down his notions 



320 SIIAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

as they came into his head, when he was writing his 
" Arcadia," as he was hunting on our pleasant plains.' But 
4 thy gift — thy Tables,' does not necessarily mean the 
Table-book which you gave me. What the gift was has 
to be inferred from its use and by comparison. ' Thy 
Tables' signifies the most sensitive receiver of her true im- 
pression. Shakspeare is writing in his inclusive and, we 
may add, infusive way ; he speaks of two things, and 
the larger contains the lesser. 

This book, then, in which Shakspeare wrote sonnet 
77, and which has been given away by the Earl in 
sonnet 122, must, Southampton being the speaker, have 
been the record of his love written, the tally that was 
kept by Shakspeare, the ' poor retention' of Elizabeth 
Vernon's beauty and goodness, which the Poet had held 
up so steadily in view of his friend, by means of the 
dramatic sonnets written in it ! The lady has felt exceed- 
ingly annoyed that he should have held her gift and its 
contents so lightly, and this sonnet was written to soothe 
her all it could. 

The reader will recollect that, in my reading of sonnet 
38 (p. 157), I proposed to unclasp a secret book. This was 
not merely a metaphor ; it was a veritable fact, but I have 
till now reserved my concluding argument and crowning 
illustration. In that sonnet, as we saw, the Poet was 
about to adopt a new argument, at the Eaii's own sugges- 
tion, and a new method of writing which was of the Earl's 
own invention. This new argument is something too 
secretly precious to be written in the ordinary way, or 
even on the ordinary paper which the Poet has been ac- 
customed to use. It is ' too excellent,' he says, for ' every 
vulgar paper to rehearse' That is, the new subject of 
the Earl's suggesting and the new form of the Earl's in- 
venting are too choice to be committed to common paper : 
which means that Shakspeare had until then written his 
personal sonnets on slips of paper provided by himself, 



THE BOOK PROBABLY GIVEN TO WILLIAM HERBERT. 321 

and now the excelling argument of the Earl's love is to 
be written in Southampton's own book — the book which 
was given to him by his Mistress for our Poet to write in. 
Thus, in sonnet 38, we see that Shakspeare is beginning 
to write in the book, which in sonnet 77 he is positively 
writing in ; and that in the following sonnet this same 
book has been given away by the Earl of Southampton. 
In sonnet 38 it was to be devoted to the Earl's love, and 
in sonnet 122 it has been devoted to the celebration 
of his love for Elizabeth Vernon. There is a reference 
to the circle of ' private friends,' who were to read 
the sonnets in .this book. c If my slight Muse do please 
these curious days ' must mean the private friends of the 
Earl and his Mistress, as the sonnets were not for public 
readers. It points to the privileged ones who were in the 
secret, and who were permitted to look at Mistress Vernon's 
gift-book. I further hold that the Earl of Southampton 
gave these MSS. to William Herbert, and that the first 
cause why Shakspeare's sonnets came into the world in so 
mysterious a manner, may be legitimately supposed to 
originate in this fact, that the Earl had given them away 
privately on Jiis own account, and thus forestalled the 
Poet in the right to possess or print them ; in all proba- 
bility frustrating any such intentions of publishing, as he 
may at one time have entertained. 

THE EAEL TO ELIZABETH VERNON" ON PARTING WITH A 
BOOK WHICH SHE HAD GIVEN TO HIM. 

Thy gift — thy tables — are within my brain 
Full-charactered with lasting memory, 
Which shall above that idle rank l remain 
Beyond all date, even to eternity ; 
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart 
Have faculty by nature to subsist, 

1 i That idle rank.' The sonnets were the work of Shakspeare's ' idle 
hours ! ' 

Y 



322 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

Till each to raised oblivion yield his part 
Of thee, thy record never can be missed : 
That poor retention 1 could not so much hold, 
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score, 
Therefore to give them from me was I bold, 
To trust those tables that receive thee more : 
To keep an adjunct to remember thee, 
Were to import forgetfulness in me. (122.) 

1 ' That poor retention is the table-book given to him by his friend.'' — Maloke. 
Nothing of the kind. The book spoken of in sonnet 77 is not Shakspeare's. 
It belongs to the person addressed. The speaker is writing in it, and he 
asks the Earl to commit his own thoughts to the waste blanks, the vacant 
leaves, of this book, which he calls i thy book] just as he says ( thy glass, , 
and ' thy dial.'' So that it is impossible for the Earl's book of sonnet 77 to 
be given away by Shakspeare in sonnet 122. It is a paper booh having some 
leaves written on, others blank. The speaker does not, in either case, say 
thy ' table-book.' He says in effect the gift-book which contained the lady's 
tables. Table being the ancient term for a picture, Shakspeare uses it in 
the pictorial, rather than in the note-book sense. This book, which was the 
lady's gift, contained pictures of her, charactered by the Pen. The Earl has 
parted with the book, but he says her tables, not her book, are within his 
brain, her truest picture -place, not to be parted with and never to be effaced. 



323 



DRAMATIC SONNETS, 



THE <DAKK' LADY OF THE LATTER SONNETS. 



c Nothing of him that cloth fade 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange.' 



We now come to the last group of Shakspeare's sou- 
nets — a series that tells a somewhat doubtful story ; 
doubtful, that is, in regard to the speaker and the person 
addressed ; otherwise, the story is uncommonly plain, and 
the speaker is infatuated with a Mistress whose character 
is not in the least doubtful. The passion is one of those 
which Horace calls ' the tortures that urge men to confess 
their secret.' Others wonder what he sees in her to 
compel his worship with such fire-offerings of love. They 
cannot find anything in her face or features that should 
make ' love groan.' JNor can he, when he comes to look 
closely at her. He is astonished that it should be so ; he 
finds no warrant for her wonderful sway over his foolish 
heart, and he asks : ' Oh, from what power hast thou this 
powerful might with insufficiency my heart to sway, to 
make me give the lie to my true sight, so that in the very 
refuse of thy deeds thou canst so influence my mind that 
I think thy worst exceeds the best of all others?' He is 
told, and he himself sees, her moral deformity ; her cha- 
racter is quite plain to him, it lies before his eyes, bare and 
black as the harbour- mouth at the lowest ebb of tide, and 



324 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

yet his foolish heart dotes on her, loves her the more, the 
more he hears and sees just cause of hate, and, in spite 
of himself, he is compelled to follow the footprints of a 
beauty gone by. Unaccountable as is the charm of her 
presence, her tyranny over him is fierce as could be that 
of those whose beauties proudly make them cruel, and 
whose sway would be explicable and natural. She has 
glorious black eyes, but then her deeds are as black. 
He knows that his own eyes are corrupted by over-partial 
looks, and that he vainly seeks to enclose in the embrace 
of his love one of the ' wide world's common places,' but 
this knowledge does not help him to his deliverance. It 
is not easy to convert such knowledge into wisdom. 

The story is grimly real ; the nature and strength of the 
passion are prominent as a wrestler's muscles : the sonnets 
differ from the others as dark from day. And it is the 
passion of a youth, that devouring name which a dallying, 
dangerous woman of years knows so well how to fan with 
a whisper, setting the blood all ablaze with a subtle smile. 
In sonnet 143, it is youth in the pathos of its plea ; in 
sonnet 147, it is youth in the fever of its passion, and in 
sonnet 151, youth in the grossness of ebuliant blood. The 
feeling is absolutely that of youth ; the arguments are 
youthful, and youthfulness is the sole excuse of the son- 
nets. That the woman is much older than the speaker 
is conclusively shown by the whole feeling, thought, and 
imagery of sonnet 143, in which the lover calls himself 
her Babe ! 

But there is nothing to connect them with Shakspeare's 
youth! They are printed as though they were the latest 
written, and we have no right, no reason to disturb that 
arrangement. Moreover, there is evidence to prove that 
they were written late, the same as there is to show that 
the earlier ones were written before certain plays, viz. in 
the thought, image or expression being used first in the 
sonnet, and repeated soon afterwards in the drama. On 



PARALLEL PROGRESS OF SONNETS AND PLAYS. 325 

this ground alone we may trace the parallel progress of 
the sonnets and plays. For example, to refer back to the 
Southampton series, the line in sonnet 89, (p. 246) — 

6 For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate,' 
reappears in £ Much Ado about Nothing,' as — 

( For I will never love that which my friend hates.' 
Also the thought of these lines from sonnet 122, p. 321 — 
( Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain 
Full charactered with lasting memory ; 
Which shall above that idle rank remain 
Beyond all date, even to eternity : 
Or at the least so long as brain and heart 
Have faculty by nature to subsist ' — 

is reproduced in ' Hamlet' : — 

f From the table of my memory 
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, 
And thy commandment all alone shall live 
Within the book and volume of my brain. 

Eemember thee? 
Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat 
In this distracted globe.' Act. i. Sc. 5. 

Again, in sonnet 88 (p. 234) — 

' With mine own weakness being best acquainted, 
Upon thy part I can set down a story 
Of faults concealed wherein I am attainted.' 

So Hamlet — 

( I could accuse me of such things, that it were better mv 
mother had not borne me.' 

In sonnet 116 (p. 285), which was written about the 
time of the Earl's marriage, we read : — 

( Love's not love 
That alters when it alteration finds.' 

And in ; King Lear ' — 

( Love's not love 
When it is mingled with regards that stand 
Aloof from the entire point.' 



326 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

But the greatest proof of all that there is some guidance 
in this method of following Shakspeare occurs in the son- 
net of 1603, on the death of the Queen and the libera- 
tion of Southampton (p. 311). In this we have — 

6 The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured.' 

and in ' Antony and Cleopatra ' — 

6 Alack, our terrene moon is now eclipsed.' 

Again, in the same sonnet — 

6 And peace proclaims olives of endless age.' 

And in the same play — 

6 Prove this a prosperous day the three-nooked world shall 
bear the olive freely.' 

The chief resemblances betwixt these latter sonnets and 
the plays occur in ' King Lear,' ' Othello,' ' Macbeth,' and 
' Antony and Cleopatra. 5 

Here are a few lines paralleled : — 

6 Robbed other's beds' revenues of their rents.' 

Sonnet 142. 

6 And pour our treasures into foreign laps.' 

Othello. 

4 Be it lawful I love thee as thou lov'st those 
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee.' 

Sonnet 142. 

c Be it lawful I take up what's cast away.' 

King Lear. 

i And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check.' 

Sonnet 58. 

* A most poor man, made tame to fortune's blows.' 

Edgae, in King Lear. 

4 Commanded by the motion of thine eyes.' 

Sonnet 149. 



THE SPEAKER NOT A MARRIED MAN. 327 

' He waged me with, his countenance.' 

Coriolanus. 

Also — 
' Her gentlewomen like the Nereides 
So many mermaids tended her i' the eyes.' 

Antony and Cleopatra. 

6 If eyes corrupt by over-partial looks, 

Be anchored in the bay/ &c. 

Sonnet 173. 

c Then should he anchor his aspect and die 
With looking on his life.' 

Antony and Cleopatra. 

6 To put fair truth upon so foul a face,' 

Sonnet 137. 

* False face must hide what the false heart doth know.' 

Macbeth, 

( Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill ? ' 

Sonnet 150. 

c Vilest things become themselves in her.' 

Antony and Cleopatra. 

We find the greatest number of resemblances in £ Antony 
and Cleopatra.' Here, however, as in the more striking 
features of the earlier sonnets, the likeness is a personal 
one. We may safely conclude, from internal evidence, 
that the present group was written after those sonnets 
which are devoted to the courtship of Southampton ; and it 
is enough to know that the speaker in these sonnets is far 
too young for it to have been Shakspeare himself at the 
time when they must have been written. 

Further, to my thinking, sonnet 152 contains indubitable 
proof that the speaker is not a married man. It brings 
the question to an issue. He distinctly charges the lady 
with being married and untrue to her wedding bed and 
bond. Then he admits that he, too, is foresworn, and that 
she knows him to be so. But he says she is twice fore- 



328 SHAKSPE ARE'S SONNETS. 

sworn, in being false to her husband and false to him. 
And, having said the worst of her, hurled at her the most 
damning charges, he turns on himself with a revulsion of 
feeling, determined to show himself as the most perjured 
oath-breaker of the two. Now, surely, we shall have it ! 
He is about to prove, in bitterness of heart, that he is more 
perjured than she, and that his sins are of a deeper dye 
than hers. Therefore, one would have thought that, if a 
married man and anxious for self-condemnation, desirous 
of showing himself in a still lower gulf of guilt, the first 
thing he would have done would be, to point out that he 
was as bad as her in kind, being himself married, and, 
possibly, worse than her in an indefinite degree, because he 
was the father of a family. Instead of this — instead of a 
manly voice heavy with passion or dogged with determi- 
nation to say the worst, we hear the treble of a youth, 
asking, ' but why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee, 
when I break twenty?' And what are the twenty oaths 
sworn and vows broken by him ? Why, he has sworn 
that she was kind, loving, truthful, and fifty other 
pretty things, which are all lovers' lies ; his perjury 
consists of oaths in her praise. And this has been imagined 
to be Shakspeare speaking of himself, under the most self- 
culpatory circumstances. The married man who has 
cruelly charged her with her crime, which would appear 
to have been committed for his sake, and then tried to 
turn the reproach from his cowardly self by a playful 
handling of the subject ! 

The thing is simply inconceivable ; totally incapable of 
a positive image, as the metaphysicians say. So is it with 
sonnet 143, of which Steevens has remarked ' the begin- 
ning is at once pleasing and natural, but the conclusion of 
it is lame and impotent indeed. We attend to the cries 
of the infant, but we laugh at the loud blubbering of the 
great boy, Will.' And well we might, if Shakspeare, who, 
in an earlier sonnet, has painted the leaf of his life in 



THE SUBJECT NOT PERSONAL TO THE POET. 329 

autumnal tint, and appeared to have felt the evening of 
his day folding about him, and seen its shadows length- 
ening in the sunset, had here represented himself in love 
with, and stark mad for, a bold bad woman — by the 
image of a poor little infant, a tender child, toddling after 
its mammy, and crying for her apron-corner to hold by, 
and her kiss to still its whimpering discontent. This would 
be laughable, if not too lamentable. But Shakspeare did 
not w r rite to be laughed at, nor did he in his riper years, 
put forth what would, if he were the speaker, be pure 
maudlin, and the very degradation of pathos. The blun- 
der of the imagery would have been almost worse than the 
criminal infatuation. But this is not the personal wooing 
of the man who carried within him the furnace of passion, 
in which the swart lineaments and orient gorgeousness of 
Cleopatra glow superbly, — the lightnings that leap from 
out the huge cloudy sorrows of old Lear, — the awful 
power that in Lady Macbeth can darken the moral 
atmosphere, past the seeing of the colour of blood, — the 
flashes of nether flame, which play like serpent tongues 
about Othello's love, till they have licked up its life-springs ! 
Again, we are asked to believe that, after Shakspeare 
had written to be laughed at, after he had published his 
private shame in so hideous a self-exposure, for the 
amusement of his patron and friends, he addressed that 
solemn 146th sonnet to his soul, by way of self-admonition ! 
We are to suppose this and the 129th sonnet to contain 
comments on his own degradation — a sermon to himself ; 
which, if the rest of the tale were true, would be a 
mockery indeed. The 129th sonnet is obviously written 
for a purpose, but that purpose is to knit and strengthen 
another against the sin which is his special shame. The 
generalised excuse of the last lines shows that it is not 
personal to the writer — 

' All this the world well knows, yet none knows well, 
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.' 



330 SHAKSPEABE'S SONNETS. 

That is neither Shakspeare's own morality nor his own 
personal excuse for a criminal relationship. It is the same 
as with the closing argument of sonnet 121 (p. 272) — 
only possible on behalf of another person than the writer, 
and only springing from an exigency of private friendship. 
These two sonnets, 24th and 25th of the present series, 
contain matter enough, properly moralised, to convince all 
who have ever approached the real soul of Shakspeare, 
that the latter sonnets were not written on an amour of 
his own. They ought to be sufficient to set us right on the 
subject, even if we had for awhile done him the injustice 
of thinking he could have been so bad, and babbled about 
it so foolishly. On the score of personal character alone, 
we should be entitled to assume that the subject of these 
sonnets was not of Shakspeare's own choosing, but im- 
posed on him by one of the ■ private friends ' for whom he 
wrote. It has no touch of his quality. In his dramas he 
abets no intrigues of the kind ; encourages no treacheries 
to the marriage bed ; is no dealer in adulteries. His 
wholesomeness in this respect is unimpeachable, and it is 
unparalleled amongst the dramatists of his or the following 
age. My interpretation is, that these sonnets were written 
for William Herbert ; that the ' Will,' of this series is the 
'Mr. W. H.' of the Dedication, and that they were written 
whilst his name was Herbert. 

It will not be necessary for me to enter much into 
detail to prove that this young nobleman was a personal 
friend of Shakspeare. The advocates of the theory that 
Herbert was the ' Only Begetter ' of the sonnets, have 
laboured utterly in vain if they failed to show thus much ! 
Whilst those who hold Herbert to be the sole begetter 
of the sonnets cannot, for the time being, become my 
opponents, whilst I show how he was one of the begetters. 
It is a fact of much significance, that the first play pre- 
sented to King James in England was performed by 
Shakspeare's company in Herbert's house at Wilton. Also 



WILLIAM HERBERT. 331 

the emphasis of the players' words, bears far more on a 
private friendship than upon any facts that have been made 
public : they carry the imagination behind the scenes. In 
their dedication to the first folio they tell us the Earl of 
Pembroke had prosecuted the Poet with so much favour that 
they venture to hope for the same indulgence towards the 
works as was shown to the parent of them. Herbert was 
an intimate friend of Shakspeare's friends Southampton 
and Essex. He was too young or too indifferent to become 
a prominent partisan of Essex, or, rather as I read it, he 
was more in love with the Earl's sister than with his cause. 
Y When he first came to Court, as we learn by Eowland 
"'White's Letters, 1 of the year 1599, Lord Herbert was 
greatly beloved by everyone ; and the kindly old gossip 
hopes he will prove a great man there. He is highly 
favoured by the Queen, who is very gracious to the young 
Lord. He is of sufficient mark and likelihood in 1599 
for White to wish that Sir Robert Sidney may be lucky 
enough to find in him a ' ladder to go up to that honour,' 
White holds his master to be so worthy of. Still, he 
does not care to climb the steep and slippery ascent up 
which so many crawl, or become the petted lap-dog of 
Majesty, and is inclined to make way for others who pur- 
sue the matter with more persistency ; he does not follow 
the Courtier's business with the necessary care and caution. 
We find that ' My Lord Herbert is much blamed for his 
cold and weak manner of pursuing her Majesty's favour, 
having so good stej^s to lead him unto iV Evidently his 
heart as a Courtier is elsewhere than with her Majesty. 
August 18th, 1599, White says, 4 My Lord Herbert hath 
been from Court these seven days in London, swaggering 
it amongst the men of war, and viewing the manner of 
the musters.' 2 September 8th, same year, 'My Lord Herbert 

1 Sydney Memoirs, vol. ii. 

2 There had "been a sudden alarm of the Spaniards coming*. Order was 
given for a camp to be raised, and ships were preparing in all haste. 



332 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

is a continual Courtier, but doth not follow his business with 
that care as is fit \ he is too cold a courtier in a matter of 
such greatness.' He is charged with a want of spirit and 
courage, and is said to be a ' melancholy young man.' Also, 
4 it is muttered that young Sir Henry Carey stands to be 
a Favourite,' and White appears to be jealous of ' young 
Carey ' who follows it — the prize of favourites — ' with 
more care and boldness.' White does not account for the 
young Lord's listlessness as a Courtier, his indifference to 
the Eoyal caresses, nor for his melancholy as a man. It 
is not that he wants a wife, for, when the subject of his 
marriage is mooted, White says, ' I don't find any dis- 
position in this gallant young lord to marry.' He has a 
continual pain in the head, for which he finds no relief 
except in smoking tobacco. More than once White hints 
that the young Lord is greatly in want of advice. He is a 
very gallant gentleman, but he needs such a friend as Sir 
E. Sidney to be near him. My interpretation of Lord 
Herbert's symptoms, as detailed by Eowland White, is 
that he was in love, but not as his friends would have 
wished ; he was then nursing a secret flame for the Lady 
Eich, the woman of various lovers. My immediate object, 
however, is to show from White's Letters that in the 
years 1599 and 1600 William Herbert was received at 
Court by Her Majesty in the most friendly manner, and 
might have been favourite ' an he would.' Next, to point 
out that during the two years following a great change 
took place in the Queen's personal regards toward him. I 
doubt not there is more evidence extant than I have been 
able to collect, but some lines by John Davies will suffice 
for my purpose. In his ode of rejoicing upon the acces- 
sion of James to the English throne, Davies congratulates 
the Earl of Pembroke, amongst others, upon the change 
that has taken place, and his prospect of a more inviting 
future at Court. He says — 



LADY RICH. 333 

' Pembroke to Court, to tohich thou ivert made strange, 
Gro ! do thine homage to thy Sovereign : 
Weep and rejoice for this sad joyful change, 
Then weep for joy : thou needJst not tears to fain, 
Sith late thine eyes did nought else entertain.' 

We see by this that the Earl had, before the death of 
Elizabeth, been looked on coldly at Court ; that he had 
kept or been kept from it, and suffered some bitterness 
of feeling which had filled his eyes with tears. My ex- 
planation is, that the estrangement arose from his being the 
personal friend of Essex and Southampton — the over-warm 
admirer of Lady Eich. We may learn how suspiciously 
the Queen had eyed any friend of theirs after their Trial, 
by a Letter of Cecil's to Winwood, 1 wherein he speaks of 
Sir Henry Danvers, whom Lord Mountjoy had employed 
to bring the report of his success in Ireland as a good op- 
portunity to help him to kiss her Majesty's hands : ' in 
whose good opinion he hath been a good while suspended, 
being known to be more devoted to the late Earl than be- 
came him.' We may also see, by a letter from the Earl* 
of Nottingham to Lord Mountjoy, to be quoted later, how 
closely and jealously the Queen was accustomed to watch 
the bearing of those for whom the Lady Eich had superior 
charms, and to whom her eyes were lodestars. I suspect, 
however, that Herbert was drawn towards Essex and away 
from the Court by an influence that was amatory rather 
than political. Late in the year 1599 Lady Eich had left 
the Court, as is reported, on account of her character, never 
to recover her lost place in the Queen's favour whilst 
Elizabeth lived ; and in the September of this year 4 My 
Lord Mountjoy, with the Lord Herbert and Sir Charles 
Danvers, have been at Wanstead these four days.' Again, 
in the May of the next year we find that Herbert was 
paying a visit of three days' length to Lady Eich and 
Lady Southampton, in company with the same trusty friend 

1 WimvoocTs Memorials, vol. i. p. 370. 



334 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

of Southampton, who laid down his life for him and Essex 
on Tower-hill. In a letter dated May 26th, 1600, White 
says :— 

4 This Morning (Monday) my Lord Herbert and Sir 
Charles Danvers have taken water and gone to see my 
Lady Eich and Lady Southampton, almost as far as 
Gravesend ; it will be Thursday ere they return.' This 
plainly enough strikes the trail of my subject : it shows the 
intimacy of the persons with whom my theory is concerned, 
and it gives a possible clue to the meaning which Eowland 
White's letters only hint at darkly. Herbert was ' greatly 
in need of advice,' questionless because of the friendships 
he cultivated and the company he kept — these being most 
unpleasing in her Majesty's sight, for the Earl of Essex and 
his sister, Lady Eich, were now both out of favour ; the 
Essex fortunes were falling, their star was fading, and the 
dark end was coming fast. We may judge how her Ma- 
jesty would resent this wandering aw T ay of Lord Herbert 
in such a pursuit by another Letter of Eowland White's, 1 
dated December 28th, 1602, in which he speaks of some- 
thing that concerns the fortunes of the Sidney family, and 
says — 4 The storm continues now and then ; but all de- 
pends upon my Lady Rich's being or not being amongst 
you.' Evidently hers was at that time a perilous acquaint- 
anceship. The Earl of Southampton and his Countess 
were also in the deepest shadow of her Majesty's dis- 
pleasure. 

Thus, I conclude that the young Lord Herbert's coldness 
as a Courtier was owing to his warmth elsewhere, and that 
it was mainly by the influence of Lady Eich he was drawn 
from the path which Eowland White was so anxious for 
him to follow, and finally caused him to lose the favour 
of the Queen altogether. There is in sonnet 149 a touching 
allusion to the estrangements which the lady has occa- 
sioned, and apparently to the loss of friends for her sake — 

1 Sydney Papers, vol. ii. p. 262. 



LOKD HERBERT. 335 

c Who hateth thee that I do call my friend ? 
On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon ? ' 

These latter sonnets, then, I hold to be written dramati- 
cally by Shakspeare to express William Herbert's passion 
for Lady Eich. 

As we have seen, the Southampton sonnets almost 
ceased with the Earl's marriage in 1598 — their chief 
end and aim being then accomplished. In the year 
1598, William Herbert had come to live in London, 1 and 
possibly through his intimacy with Lord Southampton, 
had met with Shakspeare and soon acquired some personal 
influence over our Poet. The time was most opportune. 
The young Lord could not take the warm place in his heart 
which had been consecrated to Southampton ; he did not 
call forth any such fragrance of affection as breathes 
through the sonnets devoted to the earlier, dearer friend 
of Shakspeare. But he had winning ways, was a lover 
of poets, and something of a poet himself. As a friend 
of Southampton, and of Lady Eich, he would be early 
acquainted with the ' sugred sonnets' of the Southampton 
series. 

I have suggested that he was the friend, the young 
enthusiastic seeker of Shakspeare's ' sonnets among his 
private friends,' to whom Southampton had given the 
book in sonnet 122 (p. 321) which book had been a present 
from Elizabeth Vernon to the Earl, and contained most 
of their sonnets ! It followed, as a matter of course, that 
Herbert should be ambitious of having sonnets by Shak- 
speare devoted to himself. But how was this to be done ? 
Shakspeare was now getting past his sonneteering time. 
He could never renew for Herbert the old affection which 
had set him singing for Southampton in the spring-tide. 
Before the first cycle of sonnets was completed, he had felt 

1 Lord Herbert was in London, April 3rd, 1597, on a visit to the Sidneys, 
as we learn by White's letter of that date (< Sydney Memoirs,' vol. ii. p. 35), 
and ' by my Lord Herbert's coming into the garden.'' 



336 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the autumnal influence touching his riper manhood and 
hushing that burst of music which once set all the green 
thickets of young life thrilling, and he had pleaded 

( Our love was new and then but in the spring 
When I was wont to greet it with my lays, 
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing 
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.' 

This spring, this love, these songs could not be repeated 
for another. I imagine Shakspeare was not seriously 
inclined to write at all for Herbert. He must have felt 
it tended to make common the mould of expression which 
had been hallowed by real love for Southampton, made 
sacred for ever by the privacy of their personal friendship 
and the tender uses for which many of the sonnets had 
been written. But Herbert, as the players tell us, ' pur- 
sued him with so much favour ,' was very urgent in his 
solicitations, and Shakspeare good-naturedly willing to 
oblige. Being, as he fancied, deeply and desperately in 
love with Lady Eich, a friend of his family, a companion 
beauty to his mother, a lady who must have entered the 
young lord's heart by the way of his imagination, as the 
object of Sidney's poetry and prose, there is nothing more 
natural than that Herbert should have sought to get his 
passion besung by Shakspeare. The Poet enters into the 
humour of the thing so far as to laugh at the disparity of 
their ages. He rallies his friend on the absurdity of his 
passion ; fights all he may against his infatuation ; renders 
with all possible plainness the lady's well-known character, 
and once or twice grows very serious on the subject, and 
as in sonnets 129 and 146, administers a tonic to the 
frantic inamorato, wrapt up and gilded in the gold leaf 
of the poetry. 

It is apparent that if ' Master W. II.' be meant for 
William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, he must have had 
something to do with the sonnets, not only as the collector 



THE LOVER'S YOUTH AND THE LADY'S AGE. 337 

and obtainer of them for the press, but as a party to the 
private mystery out of which the public one arose, to 
have had the right to give them to Thorpe. I say what 
his part in the imbranglement was, and there is little 
need for me to argue the possibility of that which is 
capable of demonstration. 

Shakspeare, as we have seen, had written dramati- 
cally for Southampton, therefore it was most likely that 
if he wrote at all for Herbert he would use the same 
form, and my argument that Herbert himself supplied 
his own sentiments and subject, as Southampton had 
done, is suggested by the familiar use of his name in 
the puns upon the word 'Will.' I assume that Herbert 
used the sonnets as though they had been written by 
himself. 

At first sight, it looks as if sonnet 138 was against my 
view of the speaker's youth, but a little more study will 
enable us to see how this sonnet will supply such proof 
of his youth and the lady's age as will serve to clench 
my conclusion on this head. We must bear in mind 
that a new element enters into the composition of these 
latter sonnets. They become playful and ironic at times. 
In sonnet 96, there is irony of a most bitter kind. The 
speaker assumes to be concerned for the 'good report' 
of the lady who, in sonnet 131, is black in her deeds — in 
137, is the 'wide world's commonplace' — in sonnet 142, 
has profaned her lips by sealing false bonds of love, and 
in sonnet 147, is ' black as hell, as dark as night.' In 
sonnet 138 the irony is of a smiling kind, the meaning 
altogether covert. The writer here uses the form ' Noema,' 
or, as Puttenham has it, the figure of ' Close Conceit.' 
The subject really is not the age in the usual sense, 
but the extreme youth of the speaker. The word ' age' 
conveys a double-pointed joke! 

This sonnet was printed in 1599, therefore it must have 
been written when William Herbert was in his nineteenth 

z 



338 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

or twentieth year. 1 It is spoken in merry mockery, half 
on account of his youth, and half on account of the lady's 
age, for she is seventeen years older than him and getting 
on towards forty ! The facts are partly reversed, the 
explanation is wrong by intention, on purpose to increase 
the jest. The 'simple truth' certainly was suppressed on 
both sides, and thereby fun was made in the demurest 
fashion. The young rogue knew well enough that his 
days were not past the best, and so did the lady ; both 
also knew whose days were ! But the lady's age being a 
ticklish point, that point is here used to produce the 
greatest amount of tickling. As the sonnet says, with a 
sly simplicity, ' age in love loves not to have years told.' 
It is not necessary, however, to personify ' Age,' as readers 
have done, though the printers did not. This explana- 
tion looked so natural that its sedateness has never been 
suspected. E"o one has seen how this might apply equally 
to youth in love ; the quip has never been descried. To 
prove that my reading is right, we have only to compare 
this sonnet with the copy printed in the ' Passionate Pil- 
grim,' which would be the version made use of in sending 
to the lady ! In that the lady's lies turn on her own age, 
and the ninth line asks — 

6 But wherefore says my Love that she is young V 

Which gives us the clue to the true interpretation of the 
sonnet, supplies the necessary opposition betwixt age 
and youth, adjusts the right relationship of the persons, 
shows how and why there are lies on both sides, and 
thus reveals the humour of the treatment. The youth's 
manner of speaking of himself and his years is partly a 
pleasant bit of satire on the lady's habit of not acknow- 
ledging her own age! She swears she is not more 
than thirty or so, and that she tells truth ; he smilingly 
credits ' her false-speaking tongue,' although he knows 
well enough that she tells lies. 

1 Born February • 8tli, 1580. 



TWO VERSIONS OF SONNET 138. 339 

* But wherefore says my Love that she is young ? 
And wherefore say not I that i" am old ? 
! love's best habit is a soothing tongue, 
And age, in love, loves not to have years told.'' 

Therefore he lies on the score of his age, because she does, 
and so they disguise the disparity by lying together. The 
meeting-point of both, in the last line quoted, being that the 
lady objects to the truth on account of her many years ; 
the youth because his years are so few, and he has the 
desire to be thought more of a man than his years warrant. 

The 'Passionate Pilgrim' has 'Smiling I credit her 
false-speaking tongue,' which was altered in the later 
copy to 'simply I credit' — the smiling being too conscious 
an expression for a youth ; the other more appropriately 
demure and tending to point the play on ' simple truth,' 
which has to be suppressed in the next line. The sim- 
plicity here has a touch of Shakspeare in his Autolycus 
mood : ' Ha, ha ! what a fool Honesty is, and Trust, his 
sworn brother, a very simple gentleman ! ' Even so has 
it been with the simplicity and trust of the readers of 
these sonnets, who have been completely deceived by the 
merry masker's serious face. This interpretation of sonnet 
138 helps to prove that the 96th of necessity belongs to 
the Herbert series, with its opening innuendo, ' Some say 
thy fault is youth.' 

But we have not quite done with the two versions of 
this sonnet. It was most lucky that Jaggard did get hold 
of the earlier copy, for without it we could not have 
seen on what the lady's lying turned, when she swore 
that she told the truth, nor could we have detected the 
speaker's youth, or perceived how the ' simple truth ' was 
suppressed on both sides, if we had not known what the 
lying was about. The earlier copy proves that her lies 
were on the score of her age. It also serves to make us 
curious respecting the alteration. Why should the sonnet 
have been corrected so carefully, and for the worse ? As 

z 2 



340 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

in making the change the Poet loses the antithesis between 
young and old — the grain of salt that he liked to see 
sparkle in his lines ; and the real subject of the lady's lies 
disappears altogether. There must have been private 
and particular reasons for generalising thus vaguely. 
It must have been apprehended that the line — 

( But wherefore says my Love that she is young ? ' 

might excite suspicion, and the whole story be got at ; 
another touch was needed to perfect the disguise. And 
so we catch the Poet, unless the change was made by 
Herbert himself, doing a bit of work analogous to that 
which has to be performed by the stealers of marked 
linen, viz. picking out the proof of ownership. 

This speaker then is so young that his years, in contrast 
with the lady's age, can be treated as matter for a laugh 
in the sleeve ; he is unmarried, and his Christian name is 
4 Will.' All the testimony on the score of character 
unites with the other evidence in proof that this is young 
William Herbert, not William Shakspeare ; he was a 
spirit of a different complexion, a man of another mould, 
and, at the time neither young enough to be the speaker 
with -the humorous reading, nor old enough for the serious 
interpretation hitherto accepted, he being just 35, exactly 
6 midway in this our mortal life.' At which period of 
perfect manhood and ripened power, his days could not 
possibly have been ' past the best.' If he were the 
speaker, the sonnet would have no meaning. For he 
would not be lying in saying that he was not old, and 
the ' simple truth ' could not have been suppressed by his 
not admitting that he was old. 

When Shakspeare described himself as older-looking 
than his years justified in the Southampton sonnets, he 
had an object ; here, however, such a policy in love 
would have been fatally opposed to his object. It is not 
the wont of men at 35 years of age, who are passionately 
pursuing a woman, to talk of their days being c past the 



HERBERT'S POETRY. 341 

best,' or assume, in writing to the lady, that they per- 
sonify ' Age in love.' But it seems that nothing was 
too unnatural to be committed by this writer, who of all 
men came the nearest to nature ! The ' simple truth' 
for us is just this : Shakspeare is not the speaker of this 
sonnet. It is the youth who is imaged in sonnet 143 as 
running after the lady, like a little child following and 
crying for its mother, and who pleads, in sonnet 151, that 
6 love is too young to know what conscience is.' 

It is likewise my settled conviction, not only that these 
sonnets were written for William Herbert upon subjects 
given by him for the Poet to work out, but that Herbert 
himself had a hand in their composition. They are 
frequently much less perfect than the earlier ones. Hence 
it has been conjectured that, although they are the last 
printed, they were earlier written, bearing, as they do, 
some unmistakeable marks of youth. But the youthfulness 
I hold to be not that of Shakspeare's early writing. The 
6 Will,' whose name is played upon, and to whom they 
are inscribed, had sufficient to do with the printing to 
ensure that the series devoted to him came into its 
proper place, just as the first and the last groups of the 
Southampton cycle are in their right position. And he 
also, I doubt not, had something to do with the writing of 
these latter sonnets. Herbert was himself a poet, with a 
lively sparkle of fancy, but too much given to grossness. 
He, and not William Hunnis, who died in 1597, is the 
' W. H.' of England's Helicon, and this is one of his 
pleasant conceits. 

s How shall I her pretty tread 
Express 
When she doth walk ? 

Scarce she does the primrose head 
Depress 
Or tender stalk 

Of blue-veined violets, 

Whereon her foot she sets. 5 



342 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Again, lie makes a lover ask, prettily enough. — 

6 What voice is this, I prithee mark, 
With so much music in it ! 
Too sweet methinks to be a lark, 
Too loud to be a linnet.' 

In these we find the precise play of fancy, amount of 
mind, and sort of poetry that go to the making of the 
following canzonet : — 

' Those lips that Love's own hand did make 

Breathed forth the sound that said u I hate" 
To me that languished for her sake: 

But, when she saw my woful state, 
Straight in her heart did mercy come, 

Chiding that tongue that, ever sweet, 
Was used in giving gentle doom, 

And taught it thus anew to greet : 
" I hate " she altered with an end 

That followed it as gentle Day 
Doth follow Night who, like a fiend, 

From heaven to hell is flown away : 
" I hate " — from hate away she threw, 
And saved my life, saying — " not you ! " 

(145.) 

Any, the slightest, examination of these lines must tend 
to a conviction that this is not one of Shakspeare's sonnets. 
It is not in his measure, 1 but in the very verse which 
one feels he disliked, 2 the kind of which Touchstone 
says, i I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners and 

1 That the lines are not in our Poet's measure is some evidence against 
their being of his writing. In sonnet 76 (p. 254) he had excused himself for 
always using the same measure, never changing the familiar dress of his 
thought, i Keeping Invention in a noted weed.' 

2 A measure that he has travestied for the purpose of mockery. See the 
song of Peter in ' Romeo and Juliet,' act iv. sc. 4 :— 

' When griping grief the heart doth wound, 
And doleful dumps the mind oppress j ' 

which mimics an old song beginning — 

i "When griping griefes do grieve the mind,' 



HERBERT'S HAND IN THEM. 343 

suppers and sleeping-hours excepted ; it is the right butter- 
woman's rank to market, the very false gallop of verses.' 
The lines start with a false note in the sound of the four 
first endings. Our Poet's ear would not have tolerated so 
uncertain a difference in the sound as exists between the 
words 'make' aud 'hate,' 'sake' and 'state.' Shakspeare's 
lines go off with a hearty smack of difference which brings 
them out full and satisfying to the ear, so that the rhymes 
percuss with no uncertain sound. Next, there are three 
imperfect rhymes in ' come ' and ' doom,' ' end ' and 
e fiend,' ' threw ' and ' you,' All of which Shakspeare 
may have used at times, but he never crowded them into 
so small a space. The fines have nothing of our Poet's; 
matter or manner ; neither his kind of playful conceit nor 
his musical gravity ; they no more possess his mental sta- 
ture than they do his length of line ; they are a bit of 
pretty apprentice work, and have no touch of the Master's 
hand. I hold them to be William Herbert's. Sonnet 130, 
likewise, is as palpably different from the others near it 
as it would appear if printed in red ink whilst the rest 
were all printed in black. It does not wear the vesture of 
Shakspeare's mind ; has neither the dark depth of his 
thought nor the smiling surface of his expression. It is 
in fact an imitation of sonnet 21, p. 132, which says : — 

e ! let me, true in love, but truly write, 
And then, believe me, my Love is as fair 
As any mother's child, tho' not so bright 
As those gold candles fixed in heaven's air.' 

The early sonnet is a protest against the use of false 
comparisons for the purpose of flattery, and the latter con- 
cludes with the lines : — 

c And yet, by heaven, I think my Love as rare 
As any she belied with false compare.' 

to be found in the 'Forest of Fancy,' a very rare and interesting old col- 
lection, i Imprinted "by Thos. Purfoote, dwelling in Newgate Market, within 
the New Rents, at the sign of ' Lucrece,' London, 1579. 



344 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

It is also a third address to the Mistress's eyes ; moreover 
I do not think Shakspeare would have made wires grow ! 
A different kind of repetition occurs in sonnet 96, one that 
it is impossible to explain on the personal theory : — 

c But do not so, I love thee in such sort, 
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report.' 

These lines have been used once before in sonnet 36 (p.177), 
where the feeling has the eagerness and purity of truest 
love, and they are repeated in a spirit of sheer mockery ; 
the comparisons are sarcastic, and the plea of the repeated 
lines is intentionally and utterly ironic. My explanation 
of this is that the sonnet is one of Herbert's ; that he being, 
possibly in the way I have shown, in possession of a copy 
of the Southampton Sonnets, took the liberty of quoting 
two lines of one of them, which were very suitable to 
his purpose, because susceptible of a double meaning. 
I find it next to impossible to read as Shakspeare's the 
lumbering line — 

* Thou matist faults graces that to thee resort.' 

He does not stumble amongst the consonants in that way ; 
his sense of accent and the relief of alliteration were too 
true. 

The curious in such matters may find in Herbert's own 
Poems x proof that the writer of them is one in nature, 
age and taste with the speaker of these sonnets. There is 
proof in his own handwriting, so to say, that he was per- 
sonally a sufferer from exactly such a passion as is here 
painted, and that he addressed a lady, the very same in 
character and kind of charm, as is here imaged by Shak- 
speare — not as an object of worship, but for the purpose 

1 Poems, written by William, Earl of Pembroke, many of which are 
answered by Sir William Rudyard ; with other poems written by them, 
occasionally and apart. 1650. Of these poems Mr. Hallam observes : 
' Some are grossly indecent, but they throw no light whatever on the 
Sonnets of Shakspeare.' 



THE SAME LADY ADDRESSED BY HERBERT. 345 

of disparagement and depreciation. This was not the lady 
who afterwards became the celebrated Countess of Devon- 
shire. That lady, we are told, was the object of Herbert's 
'chaste idolatry;' this lady of whom we speak was just 
the reverse. He has presented her picture in some lines 
replying to a friend who had flatly given his opinion of the 
lady, and wondered what the young Earl could see in her 
to admire : — 

( One with admiration 1 told me, 

He did wonder much and marvel, 
(As, by chance, he did behold ye) 
How I could become so servile 
To thy beauty, which he swears 
Every alehouse lattice wears. 

' Then he frames a second motion, 

From thy revoluting eyes, 

Saying — such a wanton motion 

From their lustre did arise, 

That of force thou could'st not be 
From the shame of women free ! ' 

This is the lady of the latter sonnets, feature by feature ; 
her whole character summed up briefly with a perfect 
tally. Sonnet 131 says — 

' Some say that thee behold, 
Thy face hath not the power to make love groan.' 

Here is the same servility to the beauty that is quite in- 
commensurate in appearance to the effects which it pro- 
duces — the beauty so accosting that it is merely a sign like 
that of an alehouse, which aptly expresses the ' wide 
world's commonplace ' of sonnet 137 — the servility felt 
by the 4 proud heart's slave and vassal wretch' of sonnet 
141. Then there is the very motion of those eyes so 
often dwelt on in the sonnets, and, looking in at their 
windows, we see the same interior, the same fire aglow, 

1 'Admiration/ i.e. Surprise. 



346 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the same picture of Paphos. One of Herbert's poems, com- 
mencing • Oh, do not tax me with a brutish love,' is alike 
in argument with sonnet 141 ; and all through there is 
the same inexplicable infatuation, though this is rendered 
so much more powerfully by the hand of Shakspeare. 
Having reached the conclusion, then, that William Herbert 
is the ' Will ' of these latter sonnets, it further appears to 
me that all the probabilities point to one person, and all 
the evidence tends to the identification of Penelope Eich 
as the lady addressed. 

We might fairly enough assume that these sonnets 
were in some way an issue of the earlier ones ; or that 
the same friends and acquaintances are bound up by some 
personal link of connection in the Book as they were 
in life and in their relation to the Poet. However diverse 
in subject they may be, we cannot but infer that there is 
some meeting-place of the same persons from the fact, that 
the sonnets come to us as Shakspeare's Sonnets, un- 
doubtedly gathered up by one of the friends who knew 
of their unity. Then the way in which they are mixed 
most curiously illustrates the intimacy of the persons, 
and the interchange of the sonnets. Thus we find some of 
Elizabeth Vernon's in company with those addressed 
to the other lady, and some of the c dark ' lady's mixed 
up with Elizabeth Vernon's. Also the two sonnets which 
were printed in the ' Passionate Pilgrim ' were single 
sonnets belonging to two separate stories, and yet they 
come into print together, which has a look of their 
having met in the hands of one and the same person, who 
was the object of both. If it be Lady Eich in the one 
sonnet,, it will be in the other. 

The testimony of character, too, is very conclusive. 
Even with the personal interpretation, it has been taken 
for granted that the lady whom Shakspeare is supposed 
to have loved so madly in these latter sonnets was one 
with the Mistress of whom the friend was supposed to 



LADY RICH THE ' LASCIVIOUS GRACE.' 347 

have robbed the Poet in the earlier one?, and this proba- 
bility is vastly increased by the present reading. The 
lady of whom Elizabeth Vernon is jealous and afraid 
possesses the closest natural affinity to the Circe of these 
latter sonnets. We have only to allow for the deeper 
hues into which such a character rapidly darkens for the 
likeness to be dramatically perfect. In sonnets 40 and 4 1 
(pp. 208 and 210) she is the wanton wooer of another wo- 
man's lover, and the ' Lascivious Grace.' with such power 
in transforming evil into an appearance of good that all ill 
shows well in her ; and in sonnet 150. there is the same 
'becoming of things ill.' In the Jealousy sonnets her 'foul 
pride, her ; steel bosom,' and her ' cruel eye' are dwelt 
upon by one victim of her iron rule and imperious 
will. The same character, the precise characteristics, 
are reproduced here, where another victim is made bitterly 
to feel her tyrannizing power ; there is the same command- 
ing motion of the peculiar eyes, the same cruel pride in 
their power to enthrall ; the same matters for that public 
gossip which has grown bolder with her name, as her 
reputation has become worse. Matters are now more 
serious, and the language has grown more emphatic, 
but the lady is one with the ' woman coloured ill,' in 
sonnet 144 (p. 205), and likely enough to lead souls to 
hell — the same as her of whose ; false adulterate eyes ' 
we catch a glance in sonnet 121 (p. 271); the same 
person as is mockingly addressed in the seventh sonnet 
of the present group : — 

6 Thou male' 'st faults graces that to thee resort, 
As on the finger of a throned Queen, 
The basest jewel will be well-esteemed : 
So are those errors that in thee are seen, 
To truths translated and for true things deemed. 

With this evidence alone I could venture to submit my 
case, whether the object of Elizabeth Vernon's Jealousy 
and the so-called ; dark lady ' of these sonnets be not one 



\J 



348 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

and the same person, because of my great reliance on 
Shakspeare's dramatic perception, and truth to nature in 
all that he paints, whether manipulating minutely or only 
giving an apparently careless stroke. But I shall be able 
to produce the most satisfactory proof that this is the same 
lady, and that she is none other than the Cleopatra of the 
Elizabethan Court, Lady Penelope Eich ! 

When once we have discovered a speaker for these 
sonnets who is in every way a more befitting person than 
the Poet himself, and we couple with them the name of 
Lady Eich, a whole host of suggestions and illustrations 
start up to enforce the conjecture that she is the lady 
addressed ; the object of this blind and frantic passion. 
Her coarser character in later life could not have been 
more exactly rendered than it is in these sonnets. They 
read like the plainest comments on the well-known facts 
of her career. In the year 1600 she had lost the Queen's 
favour, says the historian Camden, because she was more 
than suspected of being false to her husband's bed. And 
sonnets 142 and 152, written about the same time, contain 
the bluntest statement of this precise charge. 

King James told Mountjoy that he had 'purchased a 
fair woman with a black soul J So the lover in these sonnets 
denounces the lady as having a heart black enough to be 
the devil's looking-glass, but full of fatal witchery herself. 
In sonnet 131 he says : — 

i In nothing art thou black, save in thy deeds.' 

And in sonnet 147 — 

6 I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, 
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.' 

The black eyes of Lady Eich were a subject of constant 
comment in her time, and frequently was their colour 
associated with another kind of blackness. It was divined 
that her startling combination of fair and dark was in 
some degree the outward symbol of her curious moral 



SIDNEY'S STELLA. 349 

mixture. There is a hint of this in a letter of the Earl 
of Nottingham, who, in writing to Lord Mountjoy, twits 

him respecting these same black eyes. He says. ' I think 
her Majesty would be most glad to see and look upon 
your black eyes here, so she were sure you would not look 
with too much respect of other black eyes.'' ' But for that,' 
says the old gallant past sixty, ' if the Admiral (him- 
self) were but thirty years old, I think he would not differ 
in opinion from the Lord Mountjoy.' 1 The lad}' of these 
sonnets is one in pride of spirit with her to whose power 
Essex paid unconscious tribute when he spoke of his 
sister's strength of mind and force of character, and proved 
his own miserable weakness : ; She must be looked to, for 
she has a proud spirit.' This was cowardly on the part 
of a brother, but he spoke the bitter truth of her who had 
been the master spirit of his intrigues with James of Scot- 
land, and who helped to hurry on his own weakness until 
his folly met its fate. 

Xot only have we the nature, the age, the eyes, of 
Lady Eich accurately delineated, but sonnet 135 contains 
a play upon her name, and this occurs in a manner too 
remarkable for it to have been mere coincidence. The 
sonnet is an echo to one of Sidney's — his 37th, in which 
the name of 'Rich' is played upon throughout : — 

6 Towards Aurora's Court a nymph, doth dwell, 
Rioh in all beauties which man's eye can see ; 
Beauties so far from reach of words that we 
Abase her praise, saying she doth excel : 
Rieh in the treasure of deserved renown, 
Rieh in the riches of a royal heart, 
Rich in those gifts which give the eternal crown, 
"Who, though most Rieh in these and every part 
Which makes the patents of true earthly bliss, 
Hath no misfortune but that Rich she is.' 

Shakspeare's 135th sonnet (the 8th here) is a manifest 
imitation of this : — 

1 Brewer, 14 — 18. 



350 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

* Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will, 
And will to boot, and will in over-plus ; 
More than enough am I that vex thee still, 
To thy sweet will making addition thus : 
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, 
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine ? 
Shall will in others seem right gracious, 
And in my will no fair acceptance shine ? 
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still, 
And in abundance addeth to his store ; 

^ So thou, being Eich in will, add to thy will 
One will of mine, to make thy large will more : 
Let no unkind, no fair beseech ers kill, 
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.' 

The point of this is that the speaker is ' Will' by name, 
and the lady by nature ; and the lover playfully proposes 
to add the two ' Wills ' together ; her will, or wilful tem- 
per, is so large that it cannot be much if she will make 
' addition thus' to that ' sweet will' of her own by adding 
him ! In the next sonnet he pleads that, as she is so fond 
of having her will, she should make ' his name her love,' 
and have her will in the shape of him whose name is 
' Will.' In this personification of will or wilfulness, we 
again meet the rival lady to whose high imperious ; will ' 
the speaker in sonnet 133 (p. 209) is a prisoner, and it 
likewise features the wilful Lady Eich, the breakings-out 
of whose will were perpetual, and dashed with the true 
Cleopatra-like audacity. 

Shakspeare's sonnet touches Sidney's most nearly in the 
eleventh line, which I contend names the object of both. 
Here the secret is let out quite as palpably as the circum- 
stances would permit. It tells the lady's name in a way 
to make the mind conceive and the eye quicken, if not 
so emphatically as the speaker announces his own. There 
is an antithesis suggested which positively proves the in- 
tention of playing upon the name of ' Eich ' in necessary 
opposition to the name of ' Will.' 



THE LADY IS NOT A 'BLACK BEAUTY.' 351 

But there is still further proof of the truth of my inter- 
pretation. 

Hitherto it has been assumed that the lady of these 
sonnets was a black-eyed, black-haired beauty, with a 
complexion of the swarthiest hue. This must result 
from her black eyes having unduly influenced the reader's 
imagination. In the old age, says the first of these sonnets, 
6 black was not counted fair.' But the Poet is not speak- 
ing of women whose faces are black ; when he says that 
black is now your only true beauty, he does not mean 
' Blacks.' It is the lady's eyes, not her complexion, that is 
black. Her character may be black, but her countenance 
is not : she is neither a blackamoor nor a ' black beauty.' 

Lady Eich did appear in one of the Court masques, 
called the * Masque of Blackness J as an Ethiop beauty, 
with her hands, arms, and face blackened to the required 
tint, whilst her naked white feet dazzled the eyes as they 
dallied with a running stream ; but this cannot be the 
complexion celebrated. Nor did it need Shakspeare 
to tell us that the negro complexion was not wont to 
be admired in the antique time. The subject touches in 
a most particular way the old poetic quarrel respecting 
the rival charms of black eyes and blue. In the old 
time the frank eye of bonny English blue, or good honest 
grey, bore away the palm as the favourite of our Poets. 
Black eyes were alien to the Northern ideal of beauty. 
But here is such a triumph of this colour that black 
is Beauty's only wear. Black eyes and black eyebrows, 
not a black face nor a dark complexion ! It is the 
eyes alone that have put on mourning, and become 
' pretty mourners.' Now, the eyes would not have put 
on mourning if the face had been very swarthy ; the hair 
black ; and it is the eyes alone that are ' so suited ' in 
mourning hue. There are two distinct excuses why the 
eyes should have assumed this mourning and put on this 
black ; neither of which would have had a starting-point 



352 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

if the lady had been altogether dark ; then it would have 
been her beauty that was dressed in the mourning-robe, 
not her eyes and brows alone. 

It will be seen that there is something very special 
about these black eyes — in opposition to which some- 
thing fair is required and implied, or where is the mo- 
tive? — and when we have lifted the veil of mystery 
through which they have glittered, and behind which 
the face has been so long concealed, we shall, I think, 
find that the supposed dark lady of Shakspeare's Sonnets 
is the famous golden-haired and black-eyed beauty 
Penelope Eich, the first love of Philip Sidney, the cousin 
of Elizabeth Vernon, the sister of Essex, the Helen of the 
Elizabethan poets. 

She was ' a most triumphant lady, if report be square 
to her,' whose lively blood ran blush-full of the summer 
in her veins. As wonderful a piece of work as ever 
Nature cunningly compounded, and her beauty was of the 
rarest kind known in the North. Sidney, who proclaimed 
his love for her and his joy therein, ' tho' nations might 
count it shame ' and in the heavens set her starry name, 
has left vivid Venetian paintings of her as the ' Stella ' 
of his Sonnets, the ' Philoclea ' of his Arcadia — whereby 
the lady glows in the mind, warm with life once more. 
She had hair of tawny gold, with tresses lustrous as those 
of the Greek day-god. Sidney described them as beams 
of gold caught in a net. In complexion of face she was 
nearly a brunette. Her Poet has exactly marked the 
colour of her cheek as a ' kindly claret ;' which is defi- 
nite as the tint described by Dante as being ' less than 
that of the rose, but more than that of the violets ;' it is 
the ripe red that has the purple of peach-bloom in its dye, 
and is only seen in the deep complexion — hardly ever 
found with golden hair. 

' Of all complexions the culled sovereignty 
Did meet as at a fair in her fair cheek.' 



A PIED BEAUTY. 353 

And her eyes were black — 'black stars,' Sidney calls them. 
Elsewhere they are twin- children of the Sun, begotten 
black in the fervour of his affection. So black were the 
eyes that those who have attempted to depict them seem 
to have felt, as they say of their very dark women in 
Ano'ouleme, they were ' born ivhen coal teas in blossom.' 
Sidney calls them eyes ' of touch,' that is, of black marble. 
This opposition of blonde and brunette was striking as is 
the rich gold and the gorgeous black of the humble-bee. 
Thus her beauty had the utmost contrast and chiaroscuro, 
with which Nature paints the human face. Day, with its 
golden lights may be said to have dwelt, in her hair : Mght 
and starlight, in her eyes. The light above and the dark 
below — the fair hair with its Northern frankness of smile 
and the black burning eyes of the South glittering deadly- 
brilliant under black velvet eyebrows, with what Keats 
might have called their ebon diamonding, gave that piquancy 
of character to her appearance on which the poets loved 
to dwell. 

An angel of light at the first glance : a i precious visitant,' 
looking as though just stepped down from heaven, but 
with Proserpine-like eyes of such mystery you could not 
tell whether the indwelling divinity might not be an angel 
of darkness ; could not get at the spirit in the black mask ! 
And so she walked as a wonder among men, gathering 
hearts by impressment under the banner of her strange 
beauty, and winning such worship as falls to but few ; 
one of those ' earth-treading stars,' as Shakspeare calls 
them, that come and light up our old world awhile, it may 
be, on their downward way from that pure heaven in which 
they will shine no more ; one of the women who are just 
angels falling ! 

The poetry of Sidney is a good deal like a gorgeous 
Court dress of his time, seamed so stiffly with precious 
stones and pearls of price that it can almost stand alone, 
without being used for human wear. But to Lady Rich 

A A 



354 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

it is indebted for its most life-like breathings of nature 
and its most visible beatings of a heart beneath. To her 
beauty we owe those delicious descriptions in which poetry 
grows divinely dainty, celebrating the outward graces of 
a woman and consecrating her physical charms. It was 
Stella's beauty, seen through Philoclea's transparent veil, 
that inspired some of the loveliest, most movingly delicate 
things ever said or sung of bodily beauty. This was 
Stella's hair — 

1 Her hair fine threads of finest gold 
In curled knots man's thought to hold.' 

These were Stella's eyes, the 'matchless pair of black 
stars ' — 

6 Their arches be two heavenly lids 
Whose wink each bold attempt forbids.' 

These were Stella's cheeks — 

6 Her cheeks with kindly claret spread, 
Aurora-like new out of bed.' 

These were Stella's lips — 

e But who those ruddy lips can miss, 
Which blessed still themselves do kiss ? ' 

These were Stella's pretty pearly ear-tips — 

6 The tip no jewel needs to wear ; 
The tip is jewel to the ear.' 

It was of Stella that Sidney said — 

6 Her shoulders be like two white Doves 
Perching ! ' 

And of Stella's hand — 

6 Where whiteness doth for ever sit, 
And there with strange compact do lie 
Warm snow, moist pearl, soft ivory.' 

And of her foot — 

6 In shew and scent, pale Violets 
Whose step on earth all beauty sets.' 



IDENTIFICATION OF THE • MOURNING EYES.' 355 

And after recounting her outer perfections with the purity 
of a spirit whose warmest thoughts walk naturally in 
white, he tells how all this beauty is but 

•the fair Inn 
Of fairer guests which dwell within.' 

There is a lovely description of the same lady weeping 
in the third book of the 'Arcadia.' ' Her tears came 
dropping down like rain in sunshine, and she. not taking- 
heed to wipe the tears, they hung upon her cheeks and 
lips as upon cherries which the dropping tree bedeweth.' 
But the chief point of attraction now, as in her life-time, 
is the lady's eyes. It was the wonder of Sidney why, 
with such light hair and face so fair that the roses blushed 
and drooped half-dotingiy, half-enviously to see the deeper 
bloom in her cheek, these eyes should have been so black ! 
He asks did Nature make them so, like a cunning painter, 
on purpose to produce the utmost effect of light and 
shade ! 

4 When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes, 
In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright? 
Would she in beamy black, like painter wise, 

Frame daintiest lustre, mixed of shades and light ? 
Or did she, else, that sober hue devise, 

In object best to knit and strength our sight, 
Lest, if no veil those brave gleams did disguise, 

They, sunlike, should more dazzle than delight ? 
Or, would she her miraculous power show. 

That ichereas black seems Beauty's contrary, 
She even in black cloth make all beauty flov:, 

Both so, and thus, she, minding Love should.be 
Placed ever there, gave him his mourning weed, 
To honour all their deaths who for him bleed." 

These same mourning eyes are those of * Philoclea,' and 
the Poet has the very thought in prose ('Arcadia' p. 95), 
- Her black eyes, black indeed, whether Nature so made 
them that ice might be the more able to behold and bear 



356 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

their wonderful shining, or that she, goddess-like, would 
work this miracle with herself, in giving blackness the 
price above all beauty V And these are the eyes of Pene- 
lope Eich, the 'only Philoclea!' The eyes that consti- 
tuted the feature on which her singers always settled as 
they ranged over her beauties with the honeyed murmurs 
of bees busy in a world of flowers ! And in their dark 
depths lies the unfathomed secret of these latter sonnets. 
Here are the mourning eyes, and the very miracle which 
Nature wrought in one particular person to set blackness 
above all beauty. Shakspeare adopts and expands the 
ingenious idea used twice by Sidney : he adds other reasons 
for the eyes appearing in mourning, but the elfin-bright 
black eyes are the same ! In fact, suggestions from 
Sidney are the germ of these latter sonnets, just as with 
the earliest ones ! 

The lady of Sidney's description, then, is not a person of 
the ordinary dark and swarthy complexion, with hair of 
blue-black lustre, although he speaks of Nature setting 
blackness above all beauty ; nor is the lady of Shakspeare's 
Sonnets ; the blackness which he also celebrates as the 
only beauty is of the eyes, not of the face and hair. But 
the blackness of the eyes and the blackness of her cha- 
racter have blended to dye these sonnets and made the 
lady look dark indeed. 

The opening sonnet is of necessity founded on such a 
contrast as was only to be met in the complexion of Lady 
Eich. The argument is that since the painting of faces 
and dyeing of hair have become so common, here, in this 
peculiar combination of black and fair, this triumph of 
Nature's most cunning workmanship is Beauty's only place 
of worship. 

The fashion at Elizabeth's Court was to imitate the 
hair of the Queen. If the painter of an early portrait of 
her Majesty is to be trusted, her hair must have been of 
a ruddy gold, somewhat like the bark of the Scotch fir 



WE MUST READ BETWEEN THE LINES. 357 

seen in the glow of sunset. This natural hue was after- 
wards maintained by artifice. The practice of dyeing 
hair became as prevalent as it is to-day in Paris. The 
dead were robbed of their tresses, and, as we are told by 
Stubbes, ladies were accustomed to allure children into 
private places to snatch a grace from Nature by stealing 
their fair locks. Therefore, because of this, 1 ' my Mistress' 
eyes are raven black,' says the speaker, they have gone 
into mourning on this account, and so well does this black 
become them in spite of the implied contrast, that every 
tongue says ' Beauty should look so ! ' — should appear in 
this pattern which owes nothing to Art and cannot be 
imitated. 

If these be the jetty eyes of Lady Rich, where then are 
the tresses of the Siren's own colour, the Mermaid's 
yellow, which the Poets so harped upon? Sonnet 130 says, 
' if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head ; ' but I 
have said enough to indicate that these sonnets are not 
to be fathomed by the careless, casual glance with which 
they have as yet been read. They have many covert 
meanings that have hitherto lurked privily. We must 
learn to read between the lines. They tell a secret history 
in cypher of which we have never before possessed the key. 
I repeat, the element of irony enters into their composition. 
In sonnet 138 it is irony in a smiling mood ; in 96, it 
grows bitter, it jests with the lady's age — ' some say thy 
fault is youth' — it pleads with her not to play the part 
of Wolf in Sheep's clothing — not to assume a lamb like 
innocence of look on purpose to lead the gazers astray, 
6 Do not so I Jove thee in such sort 
As thou, being mine, mine is thy good report.' 

And this sonnet 130 is full of irony of the subtlest kind — ■ 
that which makes its mock in smooth words of smiling 

1 Our Poet's disgust must have been yery strong- on the subject of these 
practices, frequent expressions of which escape both in the sonnets and 
plays. ' Excellently done, if God did all/ exclaims Viola at first sight of 
Olivia's im veiled beaut v. 



358 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

dissimulation — wins the ear of the person addressed with 
a low loving whisper, and makes her lean expectant of some- 
thing sweet in her commendation, to find that the word 
of promise is craftily qualified — breathed to the ear and 
broken to the heart. This is what Puttenham calls giving 
the ' privy nippe,' the sly pinch of disparagement under the 
pretended fondling of praise ; it is serving up the honey 
with a sting in it. ' There's no such sport as sport by sport 
o'erthrown,' says the Princess in ' Love's Labour's Lost ; ' 
and this is the sort of sport which the speaker here makes 
with the lady who has made sport of him, and pastime of his 
passion. He is showing that he can ' gleekupon occasion.' 
The intention of the sonnet is to decry and depreciate under 
an assumed guise of praise. ~No one can suppose, for ex- 
ample, if the lady's breasts were dun-coloured, that the fact 
was mentioned for the sake of flattery , or that the description 
of the breath reeking from her indicates any niceness of 
feeling ! The apparent frankness of statement is not meant 
to please, but to take in and entrap the unwary seeker of 
flattery. It is a bit of malicious subtlety to call the lady's hair 
' black wires,' which was so often be-sung as golden hair ; 
and she had been so vain of its mellow splendour— so proud 
of its repute ! The use of the word ' wires ' points to this 
ironic reading, for the primary comparison of hair with 
'wire ' is when it is golden- — the golden wire which was made 
when Apollo's lute was strung with his sunny hair. It is 
always golden wires that hair is likened to in our poetry. 
It is not the quality of the hair, not the wiryness, as we 
say, but the colour that is meant to be decried, and the ex- 
pression is ' black wires, which, by implication, points to 
a far different colour. If it were necessary I might parry 
this expression with another which was made equally at 
random, and not meant to be a statement of fact — 

i In nothing art thou black, save in thy deeds.' 

But there is the 'if to be considered — 'much virtue in 



THE SAME LADY, THOUGH SOMEWHAT CHANGED. 359 

an " if I " ' — ' If hairs be wires,' says the speaker, ' black 
wires grow on her head.' So that the 'black' is only used 
conditionally, and the fact remains that 'hairs' are not 
' wires.' The lady's hair was just as much black as her 
breasts were 'dun,' and no more. It is the eyes alone 
that have put on black — that ' sweet black which veils 
her heavenly eye,' as Sidney describes it in his 20th sonnet. 
This is proved by sonnet 132, where the eyes only are in 
mourning, and the speaker says how well this mourning, 
which the eyes have put on, becomes her, in spite of the 
admitted incongruity, and he continues — 

' let it then as well beseem thy heart 
To mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace, 
And suit thy pity like in every part !' 

There is no mention of black hair or swarthy skin, but if she 
will do this and go into mourning altogether, then he will 

6 Swear Beauty herself is black, 
And all they foul that thy complexion lack.' 

This 130th sonnet is not intended as a true description of 
the lady, but such a deprecation as shall serve to confess 
the speaker's fatuity, and mock a coquette's vanity. 

Of course if Penelope Eich be the lady of these sonnets, 
she is not the Lady Eich of Sidney's love. Time and the 
turn of things have had their way. She is now getting on 
for forty, although one of those who never do feel forty. The 
lustres of youth have somewhat dimmed ; the splendour 
of her beauty has been doubly tarnished. Besides, it is 
not the writer's cue to praise, the description is not in- 
tended to flatter. He never meant to laud the golden 
garniture of her sunshiny head — the ' yellow locks that 
shone so bright and long ' in Spenser's verse, and glowed 
so in Sidney's eyes. (Moreover, I hold this 130th sonnet to 
be Herbert's and lacking Shakspeare's certainty of touch !) 
Her cheeks also are compared to the ' grey cheeks of the 
east,' and the ' sober west ' in their faded paleness, having 



360 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

lost the young red that used to flush up when the smile 
took its rosy rise from the cupid-cornered mouth, and 
spread over them in a soft auroral bloom. ' as of rose- 
leaves a little stirred ' with the warm breath of Sidney's 
love. This is Lady Eich with the spring-freshness gone, 
the blushing graces withdrawn. Lady Eich in the rem- 
nant of her loveliness and refuse of her deeds ! But 
changing as she is, there is all the old fire, and in her 
plainness she is proudly cruel as those who are in the 
first blush of their budding-time. And the black eyes 
remain imperial as of old in their infatuating charm ; 
cunning as ever in the black art of their beauty — full of 
the old spells, with a power to haunt like the weird 
eyes of a dream. There is a reminder too of Stella's eyes 
in ' that full Star that ushers in the Even.' 

The nature of Herbert's passion, and the deepening 
shadows of Lady Eich's character made it impossible, had 
he been so minded, for Shakspeare to laud her like 
Sidney had done, as ' that virtuous soul, sure heir of 
heavenly bliss !' and ' rich in those gifts ivhich give the 
eternal crown.' Nor did he look on her through Sidney's 
eyes. He had seen and heard of her later gifts and 
graces. Yet, in spite of the touch of time, and the waste 
of a passionate life in her intense face — in spite of the 
descriptions which so tend to defeature the image set up 
by Sidney — -we recognise the lady of the mourning eyes, 
the complexion beyond the reach of Art, whose blackness 
was above all other beauty, and know her by the original 
likeness that passes all likeness of imitation, 

Apart from other evidence, there must be some par- 
ticular meaning in Shakspeare's repeated description of 
the eyes having put on mourning, and the arguments 
being so perfectly those of Sidney, when the peculiarity 
was so singular, the complexion so rare and without 
rival as to constitute a title to fame, for the first portrait 
of Lady Eich, we must remember, appears in the work 



VERY UNUSUAL INDIVIDUALISATION. 361 

tli at was written for William Herbert's mother, and it 
reappears in these sonnets written for the son. Besides 
which this dwelling upon a feature is so thoroughly 
opposed to Shakspeare's usual way of working. Ex- 
cept for a humorous purpose, as in the case of Bar- 
dolph's firebrand of a nose, and FalstafFs mountain of a 
belly, it is not his habit to make featurely remarks, or to 
map out his characters by any of their particular physical 
signs. We do not remember Shakspeare's men and wo- 
men, as a rule, by their personal features. Not that the 
poet generalises them into vagueness, but the instinct of 
the Actor was alive to the fact that any stereotyped set of 
features would have interfered with the perfect pourtrayal 
in action. The girth of Falstaff is always a difficulty, be- 
cause the idea which has been given to the spectators 
must be acted up to ! And Shakspeare wisely abstained 
from giving his own set of faces and features, which must 
have left but little or no latitude in playing. He gives us 
the spirit of the character minutely finished, but leaves the 
physical face a good deal to the actor, and thus allows 
scope to the imagination, and a great possible variety 
of ' filling in' ; this he does with so careless an air, but 
such cunning of hand, that he is gone before we have 
noted it ! So that there must be some very uncom- 
mon cause for these repetitions of the ' mourning eyes/ 
and this frequent looking into their unfathomable dark- 
ness. For I shall show that these eyes haunted the im- 
agination of Shakspeare as much as they did that of any 
other Elizabethan poet. There is nothing like it in the South- 
ampton sonnets ; no such dwelling on a particular feature. 
Therefore the explanation must be sought in the nature of 
the object, and there is sufficient internal evidence to 
show that in the present instance Shakspeare and Sidney 
both drew from one original, and that the one poet re- 
peated the other's description because he was applying it 
to the same lady. 



362 SHAKSPEARFS SONNETS.. 

The sentiment in these sonnets of the eyes in mourning 
and of black being the sole beauty, together with the 
argument for the eyes and brows being black, when, 
according to the other parts, they ought not to be so, is 
only a repetition, curiously complete, from the play of 
'Love's Labour's Lost.' It is there applied to ' Eosaline' 
by Lord Biron. Again the same mistake has occurred. 
Eosaline is not a dark lady in the ordinary sense. It is the 
remarkable complexion of Lady Eich once more. It is 
the peerless eyes of ' Stella' that have burned on Lord Biron 
and made his temperament all tinder to their sparks — 
' Oh, but her eye I by this light, but for her eye, I would 
not love her : yes, but for her two eyes ' — the startling 
strangeness of her black eyes and eyebrows, under the 
tawny yellow hair, that excites the jesting comments of the 
merry mocking lords. The peculiarity of which they make 
fun is something beyond a dark skin : that would not ex- 
plain the pleasant conceit which moves their mirth. Lord 
Biron only defends the lady's eyes and brows, on account 
of blackness, and Shakspeare would not have written in 
this manner had the case been simple as supposed. 

f 0, who can give an oath ? where is a book ? 
That I may swear Beauty doth beauty lack, 
If that she learn not of her eye to look : 
No face is fair that is not full so black. 
0, if in black my lady's brow be decked 
It mourns that painting and usurping hair. 
Should ravish doters with a false aspect, 
And therefore is she born to make black fair, 
Her favour turns the fashion of these days, 
For native blood is counted painting now ; 
And therefore red that would avoid dispraise 
Paints itself black to imitate her brow.' 

It is the eyes and brows that are black, not the hair, 
nor the swarthiness of skin. 

6 Xo face is fair that is not full so black.' 



ONLY ONE LADY OF THE < MOURNING EYES.' 3G3 

It is the red eyebrow tliat was blackened to avoid dis- 
praise, not the red head of hair. Now, as ruddy golden 
hair was the fashion of Elizabeth's days, if Eosaline's hair 
had been black, the others ought to have dyed their hair 
as well as their eyebrows. The statement carefully 
confines the comparison to the lady's eyes and brow. 
Evidently her hair was in fashion. The eyes and the 
brow alone mourned over the falsehood of other com- 
plexions, with which tricks were played artificially. The 
perfect contrast of her complexion was a trick of Nature's 
own ; not to be approached by any cmmingnesses of Art. 
Elsewhere Biron calls the lady 

6 A witty 1 wanton with a velvet brow, 
With two pitch-balls stuck in her face for eyes.' 

The eyes are ' stuck in,' not as naturally belonging. The 
description is the same as that of the sonnets : 4 Those 
two mourning eyes ! ' it is also one with Sidney's, and the 
sole meeting-place of all three is the person and com- 
plexion of Lady Eich. Biron's indication of Eosaline's 
character is also full of likeness. There is, moreover, the 
same personification of that will to which Elizabeth Ver- 
non was ' mortgaged; 1 the Will that is so punned upon, 

' Biron. Is she wedded or no ? 
Boyet. To her will, sir, or so. 5 

And another resemblance in colour. The King in the 
Play exclaims 

6 Black is the badge of hell, 
The hue of dungeons, and the scoivl 2 of nio-ht.' 

1 I cannot think' Shakspeare wrote a ' whitehj wanton ; ' lie certainly could 
not in the sense of a sallow face or ' cheek of cream/ hecause Biron says : — 

' Of all complexions the culled sovereignty 
Do meet as at a fair in her fair cheek, 
Where several worthies make one dignity, 
Where nothing wants that Want itself doth seek.' 

2 Here, I think, my interpretation will determine a disputed reading. 
The king is decrying those brows which hare put ox blackness as the night 



364 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

The lady of the sonnets is called 

6 As black as hell, as dark as night.' 

This repetition in the latter sonnets from an early play 
is the most remarkable in all Shakspeare's writings, and it 
reverses his usual custom, which is to repeat in the play, 
from the sonnet whenever he quotes himself. The only 
satisfactory solution is that the description was written 
and repeated for the same person, and all the evidence 
concurs, all the points converge in the inevitable conclu- 
sion that this was Lady Eich. There was but one Lady 
Eich ; a woman who had no living likeness, and her lady- 
ship is the only possible ' she' of these descriptions which 
are not presentments of an ordinary dark complexion, but 
of a complexion that was the most extraordinary. 

Thus we have Penelope Eich identified as the lady of 
the latter sonnets, by the portrait which Sidney drew and 
Shakspeare copied. She is identified as the cousin of 
Elizabeth Vernon — the 'Lascivious Grace' that intrigued 
for purposes amatory and political — the witch-woman 
who had strange cunning in quickening men's pulses — the 
tyrant in her capricious power of plaguing. We have 
her identified by the very facts of her married life, her age 
in contrast with Herbert's youth, her ill deeds and darken- 
ing reputation ; by the mysterious union of opposites in her 
complexion — the 'light condition in a beauty dark,' and 
by the starry immortality of her strange black eyes ; in 
short, we have the Lady Eich, in feature, and in fame ; 
the Lady Eich by nature, and by name. 

The Historian Clarendon, in his portrait of the Earl of 
Pembroke, makes a statement very much akin to my 
reading of these latter sonnets as spoken by William Her- 
bert to Lady Eich. . He remarks ' the Earl was immode- 
rately given up to women. But, therein he likewise 

puts on its scowl. In the king's ej-es the black brows are repulsive, on ac- 
count of the contrast implied, and he likens their colour to the scowl on the 
frrow of Night. 



CLARENDON'S DESCRIPTION OF HERBERT'S PASSION. 305 

retained such a power and jurisdiction over his appetite 
that lie was not so much transported with beauty and 
outward allurements as with those advantages of the 
mind, as manifested an extraordinary wit, and spirit, 
and knowledge, and administered great pleasure in the 
conversation. To these he sacrificed himself, his precious 
time, and much of his fortune ; and some, who were 
nearest his trust and friendship, were not without appre- 
hension that his natural vivacity and vigour of mind 
began to lessen and decline by those excessive in- 
dulgences.' This is the exact replica of the character 
and taste of Shakspeare's speaker. It is a perfect parallel 
to the 141st sonnet. Throughout the sonnets, the 
speaker keeps saying it is not the outward allure- 
ments of the lady's loveliness, that hold his foolish heart 
captive : not her hair, nor her complexion, nor her face — 
these have not sufficient beauty to account for his subser- 
viency. The eyes, of course, have their charm ; they 
are the windows from whence looks a spirit wonderful in 
wit and wantoness, and in its ripest age of power ; the 
potent spirit that by word or look can bind him fast in 
strong invisible toils. He protests he is not the slave 
of his senses, but that neither senses nor wits can dissuade 
him from loving her. Then, if the character of the speaker 
in these sonnets is true to the one portrayed by Clarendon, 
the character of the Earl's ' particular vanities ' is precisely 
that of the lady here addressed and of the Lady Eich, 
about the year 1600. The glosses of her youth were 
going ; the flower had shed its purest perfume ; those that 
once ' kneeled to the rose-bud ' might ; stop their noses ' 
against the rose over-blown. But, her magic in working 
on the heart, and flinging a glamour over the eyes of a 
youth, must have attained its supremest subtlety. She 
had a keen wit ; was sprightly in conversation, and could 
say things full of salt and sparkle as a wave of the sea. 
Her hardened feelings had taken a diamond-like point. 



366 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Her natural simplicities of the early time were now craftily 
turned into conscious art. Practice had made her perfect 
in the use of those conquering eyes when they took aim 
with their deadly level in the dark. She was mistress of a 
combination of forces most fatal to a young and fervent 
admirer ; knew well how to feed his flame, and could 
turn her own years into a maturer charm for his youth. 
And as the Herbert of Clarendon's portrait is one in 
character with the speaker of these sonnets, and as the 
lady of the sonnets is the fittest of types for the females 
quoted by the Historian as being so victorious over 
the Earl, it is but reasonable to suppose that Lady Eich 
may have sat for Clarendon's description as well as for 
Shakspeare's. The Poet would not be the only person 
conversant with the Earl's passion for this lady. The 
knowledge would be extant, the fact would still live on 
in the memory of Clarendon's older friends — one or more 
of whom may have been the very friends of Herbert re- 
ferred to — when he wrote his history. It is obvious that 
he had in mind particular instances from which he gene- 
ralised his description, and it is certain that no more per- 
fect illustration of his meaning could have existed than in 
the person and character of Lady Eich. 



307 



DRAMATIC SONNETS. 

1599-1600. 

WILLIAM HERBERT'S PASSION FOR LADY RICH. 



In the old age black was not counted fair, 
Or if it were, it bore not Beauty's name ; 
But now is black Beauty's successive heir, 
And Beauty slandered with a bastard shame : 
For since each hand hath put on Nature's power, 
Fairing the foul with Art's false-borrowed face, 
Sweet Beauty hath no name, no holy hour, 1 
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace : 
Therefore my Mistress' eyes 2 are raven black, 
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem 
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack, 
Slandering creation with a false esteem : 

Yet so they mourn, becoming of their woe, 
That every tongue says, ' Beauty should look so !' 

(127.) 

1 'No holy hour. The Quarto reads ' bower.' Malone made the altera- 
tion, which is very happy. The idea is of the hour of worship : this is shown 
by the ''profaned'' of the next line. Also see sonnet 68 : — 

1 In him those holy antique hours (of beauty) are seen.' 

2 ' My mistress' eyes/ These eyes are so dwelt upon, and the lady's hair 
is so obviously omitted as to suggest a something quite unaccountable. 
Walker fancied the ' eyes ' of this line might have been a misprint for 
* hairs.' The editors of the ' Globe ' and ' Gem ' editions, acting on this 
bint, have taken a leap in the dark, and printed ' brows.' By ' her eyes so 
suited,' Shakspeare did not mean also, but her eyes thus dressed in black. 
A repetition which lays a double stress upon the eyes. 



368 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, 

Knowing thy heart torments me with disdain, 

Have put on black, and loving mourners be, 

Looking with pretty ruth upon my pain : 

And truly not the morning sun of heaven 

Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, 

Nor that full star that ushers in the even 

Doth half that glory to the sober west, 

As those two mourning eyes become thy face : l 

0, let it then as well beseem thy heart 

To mourn for me, since mourning doth thee grace, 

And suit thy pity like in every part : 

Then will I swear Beauty herself is black, 

And all they foul that thy complexion lack. (132.) 

How oft when thou, my Music, music playest 
Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds 
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway est 
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, 
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap 
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, 
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, 
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand ! 
To be so tickled, they would change their state 
And situation with those dancing chips, 
O'er whom thy fingers walk w T ith gentle gait, 
Making dead wood more blest than living lips : 
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, 
Give them thy ringers, me thy lips to kiss. 2 (128.) 

When my Love swears that she is made of truth 
I do believe her, tho' I know she lies ; 
That she might think me some untutored youth, 
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties ! 

1 So in the 'Taming of the Shrew :' — 

i What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty 
As those two eyes become that heavenly face $ ' 

2 This is the only sonnet about which I have any lasting misgivings. I 
think it may be one of the Southampton series. To me it mirrors the face 
of Mistress Vernon rather than that of her cousin. But as it does not neces- 
sarily belong to any one of the stories, and as I wish to alter no more than 
I am compelled, I have left it with Herbert's sonnets. 



COMPLIMENTAL IRONY. 369 

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, 
Altho' she knows my days are past the best, 
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue : 
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed : 
But wherefore says she not she is unjust? 
And wherefore say not I that I am old ? 
0, love's best habit is in seeming trust, 
And age in love loves not to have years told : 
Therefore I lie with her and she with me, 
And in our faults by lies we flattered be. 1 

(138.) 

My Mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun ; 
Coral is far more red than her lips' red : 
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun ; 
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head : 
I have seen roses damasked, red and white, 
But no such roses see I in her cheeks ; 
And in some perfumes is there more delight 
Than in the breath that from my Mistress reeks. 2 

1 In the ' Passionate Pilgrim/ this sonnet reads thus : — 

When my Love swears that she is made of truth, 
I do "believe her, though I know she lies, 
That she might think me some untutored youth, 
Unskilfidl in the world's false forgeries : 
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, 
Although I know my years be past the best, 
I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue, 
Out-facing faults in love with loves ill rest : 
But wherefore says my Love that she is young ? 
And wherefore say not I that I am old ? 
O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue, 
And age in love loves not to have years told : 

Therefore Til lie with love, and love with me, 

Since that our faults in love thus smothered be. 

2 ' The breath that from my Mistress reeks." 1 This expression is very 
gross to apply to a lady's breath. When Shakspeare makes use of it as 
1 reek,' ' reeky,' or ' reechy,' it is meant to be repulsive, and conveys a coarse 
idea, as in Hamlet's description of the King's dalliance with his mother, and 
Juliet's shrinking from the bones in the sepulchre. Here it would have 
been strong enough if the lady had been a Black. 

B B 



370 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

I love to hear her speak, — yet well I know 

That music hath a far more pleasing sound ; 

I grant I never saw a Goddess go, — 

My Mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground : 

And yet, by heaven, I think my Love as rare 

As any she belied with false compare. 

(ISO.) 

Thou art as tyrannous, so as thou art, 

As those whose beauties proudly make them cruel : 

For well thou know'st, to my dear-doting heart 

Thou art the fairest and most precious jewel ! 

Yet, in good faith, some say that thee behold, 

Thy face hath not the power to make love groan ; 

To say they err, I dare not be so bold, 

Altho' I swear it to myself alone : 

And, to be sure that is not false I swear, 

A thousand groans — but thinking on thy face — 

One on another's neck, do witness bear 

Thy black is fairest in my judgement's place ! 

In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds, 
And thence this slander, as I think, proceeds. 

(.31.) 

Some say thy fault is youth, some wantonness, 
Some say thy grace is youth and gentle sport ; 
Both grace and faults are loved of more and less ; 
Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort! 
As on the finger of a throned Queen 
The basest jewel will be well-esteemed, 
So are those errors that in thee are seen 
To truths translated and for true things deemed : 
How many lambs might the stern Wolf betray, 
If like a lamb he could his looks translate ! 
How many gazers might'st thou lead away 
If thou would'st use the strength of all thy state ! 
6 But do not so : I love thee in such sort, 
As thou being mine, mine is thy good report? 1 

(96.) 

1 The sonnets are so essentially self-contained in subject, so limited in the 
range of their reference to matters concerning the private friends, that we 



THE TWO WILLS. 371 

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will ! 

And Will to boot, and Will in overplus : 

More than enough am I that vex thee still, 

To thy sweet Will making addition thus : 

Wilt thou, whose Will is large and spacious, 

Not once vouchsafe to hide my ( Will ' in thine ? 

Shall Will in others seem right gracious, 

And in my e Will ' no fair acceptance shine ? 

The sea, all water, yet receives rain still 

And in abundance addeth to his store ; 

So thou being EICH in Will, add to thy Will 

One c Will ' of mine, to make thy large Will more : 

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill ; 

Think all but one, and me in that one ' Will.' ] 

(135.) 

If thy soul check thee that I come so near, 
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy i Willy 
And Will, thy soul knows, is admitted there ! 
Thus far, for love, my lovesuit, Sweet ! fulfil : 



have but a small circle to traverse for the purpose of identification, whether 
of person or circumstance. Thus we may conclude that the past love- 
quarrel and its consequent l night of woe' referred to by Southampton 
in sonnet 120, is the same as we saw taking place in ' Elizabeth Yernon's 
Jealousy ; ' that being the very reason why it was referred to ! So of the 
gift-book which has been parted with in sonnet 122. It is the same as Skak- 
speare was about to write in in sonnet 38 ; the same as he was writing in when 
he composed sonnet 77, and that again is the reason why a sonnet is devoted 
to its being given away. So of the lady of these latter sonnets, whose wan- 
ton graces have ' such becoming of things ill.' She is here written of be- 
cause she was the siren addressed in the earlier ones as that ' Lascivious 
Grace in whom all ill well shows!' Following this clue, I must believe 
that these lines were repeated to one who was acquainted with them in 
the Southampton sonnets, for therein lies the very point of their sting, 
and I can discover no other motive for the repetition. But, then, Shakspeare 
could not have repeated his own well-known lines for the purpose of scathing 
Lady Pack with scorn ! I see no other feasible or possible conclusion than 
that Herbert repeated two of Shakspeare's lines in a sonnet of his own, be- 
cause the lady was already familiar with them. 

1 The lady's Will is a personification of her wilfulness ; the speaker's 
' Will' is his name ; these I have tried to distinguish. His plea is that the 
lady should love his ' Will ' — himself — rather than hers, and have his 
• Will ' instead of her own, by making him her 'Will.' 

b n 2 



372 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love, 
Ay, fill it full with Wills, and my < Will ' one : 
In things of great receipt with ease we prove 
Among a number one is reckoned none : 
Then in the number let me pass untold, 
Tho' in thy store's account I one must be, 
For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold 
That nothing me, a something, Sweet ! to thee : 

Make but my name thy love, and love that still, 
And then thou lov'st me, for my name is ' WilV 

(136.) 

Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate ! 
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving : 
0, but with mine compare thou thine own state, 
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving ; 
Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine, 
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments 
And sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine ; 
Eobbed others' beds' revenues of their rents : 
Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those 
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee : 
Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows 
Thy pity may deserve to pitied be : 

If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide, 
By self-example may est thou be denied ! 

(142.) 

Lo ! as a careful housewife runs to catch 
One of her feathered creatures broke away, 
Sets down her babe and makes all swift despatch 
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay, 
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chace, 
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent 
To follow that which flies before her face, 
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent ; 
So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, 
Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind : 
But if thou catch thy hope, turn back to me, 
And play the Mother's part, kiss me, be kind ! 

So will I pray that thou may'st have thy ' Will,' 
If thou turn back, and my loud crying still. 

(143.) 



LOVING ELSEWHERE. 373 

Being your slave, what should I do but tend 
L T pon the hours and times of your desire ? 
I have no precious time at all to spend, 
Nor services to do, till you require ! 
Nor dare I chide the world-with out-end hour, 
Whilst I, my Sovereign, watch the clock for you, 
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour 
When you have bid your Servant 1 once adieu : 
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought 
W 7 here you may be, or your affairs suppose, 
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought 
Save, where you are how happy you make those : 
So true a fool is love that, in your e Will,' a 
Tho' you do anything, he thinks no ill. 

(57.) 

That god forbid that made me first your slave, 

I should in thought control your times of pleasure ; 

Or at your hand the account of hours to crave, 

Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure ! 

let me suffer, being at your beck, 

The imprisoned absence of your liberty ; 

And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each check 

Without accusing you of injury ! 

Be where you list, your charter is so strong 

That you yourself may privilege your time ; 

Do what you will ; to you it doth belong 

Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime ! 

I am to wait, tho' waiting so be hell ; 

Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well. 3 

(58.) 

1 ' Your Servant? l Servant ' implied the ' Mistress ' in the gallantry of 
the time. In the ' Two Gentlemen of Verona' (act ii., sc. 4), Mistress and 
Servant occur three times over in eight lines. In other sonnets the ' Mis- 
tress ' is spoken of, and in this the relationship of the Cavalier Servente is 
described with marked emphasis. 

2 ' WilV This ' Will/ which links sonnet 57 to the Herbert series, has 
been quite lost sight of ever since the Book of Sonnets was first printed. 
See remarks in a later chapter. 

3 Here is the obverse side of this Coin of Character, with the lady's fea- 
tures stamped upon it large as life ! According to my interpretation it is 
the person addressed in these sonnets, the Lady Rich, who, as Rosaline, 



374 SHAKSPEARE'S S0NNET8. 

0, call me not to justify the wrong 
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart ; 
Wound me not with thine eye, but with thy tongue ; 
Use power with power and slay me not by art : 
Tell me thou lov'st elsewhere, but in my sight 
Dear heart ! forbear to glance thine eye aside : 
What need'st thou wound with cunning, when thy might 
Is more than my o'erpressed defence can bide ? 
Let me excuse thee : ah ! my Love well knows 
Her pretty looks have been my enemies ; 
And therefore from my face she turns my foes, 
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries : 
Yet do not so ; but since I am near slain, 
Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain. 

(139.) 

Be wise as thou art cruel ! do not press 

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain ; 

Lest Sorrow lend me words, and words express 

The manner of my pity-wanting pain : 

If I might teach thee wit, better it were, 

Tho' not to love, yet, Love, to tell me so ; 

tlius threatens that treatment and torture which Herbert acknowledges in 
the beautiful tyrant's own words, and humbly accepts in very deed. 

1 How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek, 

And wait the season, and observe the times, 

And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rhymes, 

And shape his service wholly to my hests, 

And make him proud to make mo proud, that jests ! 

So potently* would I o'ersway his state 

That he should be my fool, and I his fate.'' 

Love's Labour's Lost, act v., sc. 2. 

a I elect to use this word in place of the ' perttaunt like' or 'pertaunt like,' 
of Quarto and Folio. It may have been ' potent like,' meaning like a poten- 
tate ; but I more than doubt if Shakspeare arrested his thought mid-swing, 
lamed his expression, and checked the coming climax of the lines by a simile 
conveyed in that way. Neither do I think the Poet wrote i you equal po- 
tents ' in ' King John,' but ' you equal-potent, fiery-kindled spirits,' as he 
used 'subtle-potent ' in ' Troilns and Cressida.' ' Potently ' points the empha- 
sis on the ' so ' with far more simple force. The whole word was bungled by 
the printers, who would find it equally easy to make the ' lie ' into ' like,' 
as to convert 'potent ' into ' perttaunt.' That it was not 'portent-like,' may 
be gathered from a line in ' Coriolanus : ' — 

' Arriving, 
A place of potency, and sway o' the state.' 

Thus read and illustrated, the lines quoted prove the, changeful potency ' of 
•' Troilus and Cressida' (act ii., sc. 2) to be the right lection. 



BLINDFOLD LOVE. 375 

As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, 
No news but health from their Physicians know ; 
For if I should despair, I should grow mad, 
And in my madness might speak ill of thee : 
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, 
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be : 
That I may not be so, nor thou belied, 
Bear thine eyes straight, tho' thy proud heart go wide. 

(HO.) 

Cans't thou, cruel ! say I love thee not, 
When I against myself with thee partake ? 
Do I not think on thee when I forgot 
Am of myself, all tyrant for thy sake ? 
Who hateth thee that I do call my friend ? 
On whom frown'st thou that I do fawn upon ? 
Nay, if thou lower'st on me, do I not spend 
Eevenge upon myself with present moan ? 
What merit do I in myself respect, 
That is so proud thy service to despise, 
When all my best doth worship thy defect, 
Commanded by the motion of thine eyes ? 

But Love, hate on, for now I know thy mind ; 

Those that can see thou lov'st, and I am blind. 

(149.) 

Thou blind fool, love, what dost thou to mine eyes, 

That they behold, and see not what they see ? 

They know what beauty is, see where it lies, 

Yet what the best is take the worst to be : 

If eyes, corrupt by over-partial looks, 

Be anchored in the bay where all men ride, 

Why of eyes' falsehood hast thou forged hooks, 

Whereto the judgement of my heart is tied ? 

Why should my heart think that a several plot, 

Which my heart knows the wide world's common place ? 

Or mine eyes seeing this, say this is not, 

To put fair truth upon so foul a face ? 

In things right true my heart and eyes have erred, 
And to this false plague are they now transferred. 

(137.) 



376 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

me ! what eyes hath love put in my head, 

Which have no correspondence with true sight ? 

Or if they have, where is my judgement fled, 

That censures falsely what they see aright ? 

If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote, 

What means the world to say it is not so ? 

If it be not, then love doth well denote, 

Love's eye is not so true as all men's ! l no, 

How can it ? 0, how can love's eye be true, 

That is so vext with watching and with tears ? 

No marvel then, tho' I mistake my view ; 

The sun itself sees not till heaven clears : 

cunning Love ! with tears thou keep'st me blind, 
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find ! 

(148.) 

In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes, 
For they in thee a thousand errors note ; 
But tis my heart that loves what they despise, 
Who in despite of view is pleased to dote : 
Nor are my ears with thy tongue's tune delighted ; 
Nor tender feeling to base touches prone, 
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited 
To any sensual feast with thee alone : 
But my five wits, nor my five senses can 
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, 
Who leaves, unswayed, the likeness of a man, 
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal-wretch to be : 
Only my plague thus far I count my gain, 
That she that makes me sin awards me pain. 

(141.) 

1 ' Love's eye is not so true as all men's.' It has "been suggested by the 
Editor of ' Walker's Examination/ that a pun was intended in this line on 
the ' eye ' and I, i e. ' ay.' And the editors of the ' Globe ' and ' Gem ' 
editions have adopted it, and read ' Love's u eye " is not so true as all men's 
" No." ' But I cannot bring myself to believe that Shakspeare thus snapped 
the continuity and maimed the sense to catch at a quibbling sound. His point 
is that the eye of one cannot see so truly as the eye of all men, and this is 
lost if we accept the pun and alter the punctuation. Singleness of expression 
is absolutely demanded by the nature of the thought, and for the carrying on 
of the argument. Shakspeare did not make all the puns that were possible 
to him. 



PAST CURE— PAST CAEE ! 377 

0, from what power has thou this powerful might 

With insufficiency my heart to sway ? 

To make me give the lie to my true sight, 

And swear that brightness doth not grace the day ? 

Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill, 

That in the very refuse of thy deeds 

There is such strength and warrantise of skill 

That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds ? 

Who taught thee how to make me love thee more 

The more I hear and see just cause of hate ? 

0, tho' I love what others do abhor, 

With others thou should'st not abhor my state ! 

If thy un worthiness raised love in me, 

More worthy I to be beloved of thee. 

(loO.) 

My love is as a fever, longing still 

For that which longer nurseth the disease ; 

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, 

The uncertain sickly appetite to please : 

My Reason, the Physician to my love, 

Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, 

Hath left me, and I desperate now approve 

Desire is death, which Physic did except : 

Past cure I am, now reason is past care, 

And frantic-mad with evermore unrest ; 

My thoughts and my discourse, as madmen's, are 

At random from the truth vainly expressed ; 

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, 
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. 

(147.) 

In loving thee thou know'st I am forsworn, 
But thou art twice forsworn, to me love swearing, 
In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith torn 
In vowing new hate after new love bearing : 
But why of two oaths' breach do I accuse thee, 
When I break twenty ? I am perjured most ; 
For all my vows are oaths but to misuse thee, 
And all my honest faith in thee is lost ; 



378 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

For I have sworn deep oaths of thy deep kindness, 
Oaths of thy love, thy truth, thy constancy ; 
And, to enlighten thee, gave eyes to blindness, 
Or made them swear against the thing they see ; 
For I have sworn thee fair ; more perjured I, 
To swear, against the truth, so foul a lie. 

(152.) 

Love is too young to know what conscience is ! 
Yet who knows not, conscience is born of love ? 
Then, gentle cheater, urge not my amiss, 
Lest guilty of my faults thy sweet self prove : 
For thou betraying me, I do betray 
My nobler part to my gross body's treason ; 
My soul doth tell my body that he may 
Triumph in love ; flesh stays no farther reason ; 
But rising at thy name, doth point out thee 
As his triumphant prize : proud of this pride 
He is contented thy poor drudge to be, 
To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side : 

No want of conscience hold it that I call 

Her — Love ! for whose dear love I rise and fall. 

(151.) 

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame 
Is lust in action ; and till action, lust 
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, 
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust ; 
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight, 
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had 
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait 
On purpose laid to make the taker mad : 
Mad in pursuit and in possession so : 
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme ; 
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe ; 
Before, a joy proposed ! behind, a dream ! 

All this the world well knows, yet none knows well 
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. 

(129.) 



FINAL APPEAL TO THE LOVER'S MANHOOD. 379 

Poor Soul, the centre of my sinful earth, — 
My sinful earth these rebel powers array — 
"Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, 
Painting thy outward walls so eostly-gay ? 
Why so large cost, having so short a lease, 
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ? 
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, 
Eat up thy charge ? is this thy body's end ? 
Then, Soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, 
And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; 
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross : 
"Within be fed, without be rich no more ! 

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on Men, 
And Death once dead there's no more dying then. 1 

(146.) 

1 The first two lines of this sonnet in the Quarto read — 

' Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, 
My sinful earth these rebel powers that thee array.'' 

There being two syllables too many in the second line, Malone thought the 
printers had inadvertently repeated 'my sinful earth,' and proposed to read, 

'Fooled by these rebel powers that thee array.' 

Steevens would read, ' Starved by the rebel powers.' It has been sug- 
gested that we should read, ' Foiled by these rebel powers.' Also, ' Slave to 
these rebel powers, &c.' I have simply taken out two superfluous words, 
which the printers stuck in, and the result is perfect sense, without losing 
the added touch of solemnity that is given, and obviously intended, by the 
repetition of l my sinful earth. 1 The sonnet is in Shakspeare's largest, sim- 
plest style, and he would not have cramped his second line by such an expres- 
sion as 'that thee array.' Not only would not, he could not, for there is no 
'thee' to address in this line. These ' rebel powers' do not array the soul; 
they are of the flesh ; they array his sinful earth. 'Array,' here, does not 
only mean dress, I think it also signifies that in the flesh these rebel powers 
set their battle in array against the soul. 



380 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 



LADY PENELOPE RICH 



Penelope Devereux was a daughter of one of those proud 
old English houses, whose descendants love to dwell on 
the fact that they came in with the Norman Conquest. 
The progenitor of the English branch of the Devereux' 
bore high rank in Normandy before he carved out a larger 
space for himself on English soil at the battle of Hastings 
as one of Duke William's fighting men. He became the 
founder of an illustrious House that was destined to match 
four times with the royal Plantagenets, and to be enriched 
with the blood and inherit the honours of the Bohuns and 
Fitzpierces, Mandevilles and Bouchiers. On the father's 
side, Penelope Devereux descended from Edward III., and 
her mother, Lettice Knollys, was cousin, once removed, to 
Queen Elizabeth. Thus a dash of blood doubly-royal ran 
in her veins, and in her own personal beauty this noble 
sap of the family tree appears by all report to have put 
forth a worthy blossom. 

Her father was that good Earl Walter whom Elizabeth 
called ' a rare jewel of her realm and an ornament of her 
nobility,' whose character was altogether of a loftier kind 
than that of his more famous son Eobert, the royal Fa- 
vourite. His story is one of the most touching — he 
having, as it was suspected, had to change worlds in order 
that Leicester might change women. 

Penelope was four years older than her brother Eobert. 



DEATH OF THE GOOD EARL WALTER. 381 

She was bom at Chartley in 1563. Very little is known 
of her childhood. She was but thirteen years of age, the 
oldest of five children, at the time of her father's early 
death, and the bitterest pang felt by the brave and gentle 
Earl was caused at his parting from the little ones that 
were being left so young when they so much needed his 
fatherly forethought and protecting care. 

There are few stories more pathetic than that told of 
this Earl's bearing on his death-bed, by the faithful pen of 
some affectionate soul, said to have been one of his two 
chaplains, Thomas Knell by name. He suffered terribly 
and was grievously tormented, says the narrator, for the 
space of twenty-two days. He was dying far from his poor 
children, who were about to be left fatherless, with almost 
worse than no mother. He may have had a dark thought 
that he had been sent away by one of his enemy's cunning 
Court-tricks to be stricken and to die — 'nothing was 
omitted,' says Camden, ' whereby to break his mild spirit 
with continual crosses one in the neck of another' — that 
Leicester was secretly taking his life preliminary to the 
taking of his wife ; but he bore his affliction with a most 
valiant mind, and, ' although he felt intolerable pain, yet 
he had so cheerful and noble a countenance that he seemed 
to suffer none at all, or very little,' nor did he mur- 
mur through all the time and all the torture. He is 
described as speaking ' more like a divine preacher and 
heavenly prophet' than a mortal man, lying or kneeling 
with a light soft as the light of a mother's blessing, smiling 
down from her place in heaven, on his fine face, which 
was moulded by Nature in her noblest mood, and finished 
by suffering with its keenest chisel. ' What he spoke/ 
says the narrator, ' brake our very hearts, and forced out 
abundant tears, partly for joy of his godly mind, partly 
for the doctrine and comfort we had of his words. But, 
chiefly I blurred the paper with tears as I writ.' His 
only care in worldly matters was for his children, to 



382 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

whom often lie commended his love and blessing, and 
yielded many times, even with great sighs, most devout 
prayers to God that he would bless them and give them 
his grace to fear him. For his daughters also he prayed, 
lamenting the time, which is so vain and ungodly, as he 
said, considering the frailness of women, lest they should 
learn of the vile world. He never seemed to sorrow but 
for his children. ' Oh, my poor children,' often would he 
say, ' God bless you, and give you his grace.' Many times 
begging mercy at the hands of God, and forgiveness of 
his sins, he cried out unto God, ' Lord forgive me, and 
forgive all the world, Lord, from the bottom of my heart, 
from the bottom of my heart, even all the injuries and 
wrongs, Lord, that any have done unto me. Lord, for- 
give them, as I forgive them from the bottom of my 
heart.' He was anxious that Philip Sidney should marry 
his daughter Penelope, and in feeling he bequeathed her 
to him. Speaking of Sidney, two nights before he died 
he said, ' Oh, that good gentleman ! have me commended 
unto him, and tell him I send him nothing, but I wish 
him well, and so well that if God so move both their 
hearts, I wish that he might match with my daughter. I 
call him son. He is wise, virtuous and godly ; and if he 
go on in the course he hath begun, he will be as famous 
and worthy a gentleman as England ever bred.' Two 
days before his death he wrote his last letter to the Queen, 
in which he humbly commits his poor children to her 
Majesty, and her Majesty to the keeping of God. ' My 
humble suit must yet extend itself further into many 
branches, for the behoof of my poor children, that since 
God doth now make them fatherless, yet it will please 
your Majesty to be a mother unto them, at the least by 
your gracious countenance and care of their education, 
and their matches.' The night before he died ' he called 
William Hewes, which was his musician, to play upon the 
virginals and to sing. Play, said he, my song, Will Hewes, 



SIDNEY'S LOVE FOR PENELOPE DEVEREUX. 383 

and I will sing it myself. So he did it most joyfully, not 
as the howling swan, which, still looking down, waileth 
her end, but as a sweet lark, lifting up his hands and 
casting up his eyes to his God, with this mounted the 
crystal skies and reached with his unwearied tongue the 
top of the highest heavens. Who could have heard and seen 
this violent conflict, having not a stonied heart, without 
innumerable tears and watery plaints ? ' Unhappily, the 
dying father's wish on the subject of his daughter's mar- 
riage was not to be fulfilled. Waterhouse, in his letter 
to Sir H. Sidney, 1 unconsciously uttered a prophecy 
when he said, ' Truly, my lord, I must say to your lord- 
ship, as I have said to my Lord of Leicester and Mr. 
Philip, the breaking off from this match will turn to more 
dishonour than can be repaired with any other marriage 
in England ! ' The marriage did not take place, and in 
many ways the predicted dishonour came. 

It has been conjectured that Sidney alluded to Lady 
Penelope in a letter to his friend, Languet, who, in the 
course of their correspondence, had exhorted him to marry. 
He says, ' Eespecting her of whom I readily acknowledge 
how unworthy I am, I have written you my reasons long 
since, briefly indeed, but yet as well as I was able.' 2 If 
Sidney spoke of Lady Penelope Devereux in this letter, 
his reasons for not marrying just then may have been that 
he thought her too young at that time, for she was but 
fifteen years old, the date of his letter being March 1578. 
In his 33rd sonnet he reproaches himself for not being able 
to see by the ' rising moon' what a ; fair day' was about 
to unfold. It is not probable that the two lovers were 
already apart three years before the lady's marriage with 
Lord Eich. The time came, however, when, from some 
fatal cause or other, they were sundered, although there 



2 Correspondence of Sidney and Languet, translated by S. A. Pears, 
1845 : p. 144. 



384 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

is proof that they had been drawn together by very 
tender ties. 

Lady Penelope Devereux in her eighteenth year, had 
bloomed into such a rose of beauty, as would have found 
(we like to think,) a fit nestling place for giving forth its 
sweetness in the bosom of Philip Sidney! And it seems 
one of those sad inevitable things which make so much 
of the tragedy of the human lot, that these two should 
not have come together. If they had married, how 
different it all might have been ! 

Heylin describes Penelope Devereux as being ' a lady 
in whom lodged all attractive graces of beauty, wit, and 
sweetness of behaviour, which might render her the 
absolute mistress of all eyes and hearts.' What Sidney 
was, the world has gathered from the glimpse we get 
of him, in his brief beautiful life, and saintly death. In 
his nature, humanity nearly touched the summit of its 
nobleness. And, from him, Penelope was taken to be 
given to a man whose character as nearly sounded the 
depths of human baseness. Thus the radiance of her 
tender romance died out, and the hues of love's young 
dawn all faded into the light of common day ! 

Sidney has told the story of his love for Lady Eich 
under the title of ' Astrophel and Stella,' in 108 sonnets, 
which were first printed in quarto, 1591. He asks us to 
listen to him, because he must unfold a riddle of his own 
life. It was of this personal passion of his, that the Muse 
said to him : ' Fool ! look in thy heart and write' The 
object of his writing, he tells us, was that the ' dear she,' 
whom he had lost for ever through her marriage with 
Lord Eich, might ' take some pleasure of his pain ; ' a 
sentiment that springs straight from the deepest root of 
the feeling of which it has been said, ; All other pleasures 
are not worth its pains ! ' 

We have seen something of Penelope Devereux's per- 
sonal graces as pictured by her lover in the ; Arcadia.' 



THE LOVERS PARTED. 385 

In these sonnets he again describes her as having ' black 
eyes,' and £ golden hair,' and he dwells much upon those 
w black stars,' and ' black beams ' of her eyes. He illus- 
trates the peculiarity of her complexion, and the ' kindly 
claret' of her cheek, by a story. The 22nd sonnet 
relates how on a hot summer's day he met ' Stella ' with 
some other fair ladies. They were on horse-back, with a 
burning sun in the cloudless blue. The other ladies were 
compelled to shade their faces with their fans to preserve 
their fairness; ' Stella' alone rode with her beauty bare, 
and she the daintiest of all, went openly free from harm, 
whilst the ' hid and meaner beauties,' were parched. 

' The cause was this ; 
The Sun which others burned, did her but kiss.' 

It is of Lady Kich that Sidney speaks, when in sonnet 
39, he makes his enchanting promise to Sleep, in that 
most charming of invocations. — 

6 make in me these civil wars to cease ! 
I will good tribute pay if thou do so ; 
Take thou of me, sweet pillows, sweetest bed ; 
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland and a weary head : 
And if these things, as being thine by right, 
Move not thy heavy grace, thou sJialt in me, 
Livelier than elseiuhere, Stella's image see ! ' 

Not only is she ' rich in all beauties ' that man's eye can 
look on, but she is likewise, — 

* Rich in the treasure of deserved renown ; 
Rich in the riches of a royal heart ; 
Rich in those gifts which give the Eternal Crown ; 
Who, tho' most Rich in these and every part 
Which make the patents of true earthly bliss, 
Hath no misfortune, but, that Rich she is.' 

This lady so rich by nature is cursed in being Rich by 

cc 



38G SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

name. The 33rd sonnet appears to tell ns how the Poet 
lost her. — 

6 1 might, unhappy word ! me ! I might, 
And then would not, or could not see my bliss ; 
Till now, wrapt in a most infernal night, 
I find how heavenly day, Wretch ! I did miss. 
Heart ! rend thyself, thou dost thyself but right ; 
No lovely Paris made thy Helen his ! 
No force, no fraud, robbed thee of thy delight, 
Nor Fortune of thy fortune author is : 
But to myself, myself did give the blow, 
While too much wit (forsooth) ! so troubled me, 
That I respects for both our sahes must show : 
And yet could not, by rising Morn foresee 

How fair a day was near ! punished eyes ! 

That I had been more foolish, or more wise.' 

He might have called her his own, but he must needs 
show his wisdom by waiting a little longer. He was 
troubled in the matter with too many thoughts, and too 
much wit forsooth. He stood upon respects for both 
their sakes, which kept them asunder until it was too 
late. For whilst he would, and would not ; looked and 
longed, and shyly shilly-shallied, other influences were 
brought to bear. The lady's friends were anxious that 
she should wed a wealthy fool, and possibly the proud 
impetuous beauty of sixteen or seventeen may have felt 
piqued at Sidney's delay, and wilfully played into the 
hands of an evil fortune. How Sidney was aroused from 
his dream, and awoke to the fact that he had lost his 
day, and might now stretch forth his empty arms till 
they ached, and call in vain upon those eyes that were 
far from him as the stars, is told, in his sonnets ; how 
the reckless lady found that she had dashed away the 
sweetest, purest cup of noble love ever proffered to her 
lips, is written in her after-life, and in the useless search 
for that which she had missed once and for ever. The 
two were doomed to walk on the opposite banks, with 



CHARACTER OF LORD RICH. 387 

yearnings toward each other, while the river of life kept 
broadening on between them, pushing them farther and 
farther apart, who were sundered for all time, possibly 
for eternity. 

The character of Lord Eich as a husband is painted 
by Sidney in sonnet 22. The description agrees with 
others in representing him to have been a poor, vulgar 
Lord with a very sordid soul. 

6 Rich fools there be, whose base and filthy heart 
Lies hatching still the goods wherein they flow 
And damning their own selves to Tantal's smart; 
Wealth breeding want; more blest, more wretched grow: 
Yet to those fools Heaven doth such wit impart, 
As what their hands do hold their heads do knotv, 
And knowing love, and, loving, lay apart 
As sacred things, far from all Danger's show ! 
But that rich Fool who, by blind Fortune's lot, 
The richest gem of love and life enjoys, 
And can with foul abuse such beauties blot ; 
Let him, deprived of sweet but unfelt joys, 

(Exiled for aye from those high treasures, which 
He knows not) grow in only folly rich.' 

The sonnets lead us to think that the lady's heart 
remained with Sidney ; although or because he depicts the 
passion as being kept sacred chiefly through her own 
strength of character. In sonnet 11 he treats the subject 
in an elegantly quaint manner. ' In truth, love,' he 
exclaims, ' with what a boyish mind thou dost proceed in 
thy most serious ways ! Here is heaven displaying its 
best to thee. Yet of that best thou leavest the best behind.' 
For like a child that has found some pretty picture-book 
with gilded leaves, and is content with the glitter and 
the outside show, and does not care for the written riches, 
so love is content to play at ' looking babies ' in Stella's 
eyes, and at bo-peep in her bosom. 

i Shining in each outward part, 
But, fool ! seeks not to get into her heart.' 
c c 2 



388 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Then the lover's pleadings grow more in earnest. 

s Soul's joy ! bend not those morning stars from me, 
Where virtue is made strong by beauty's might ; 
Where love is chasteness, pain doth learn delight, 
And humbleness grows on with majesty: 
Whatever may ensue, oh let me be 
Copartner of the riches of that sight : 
Let not mine eyes be hell-driven from that light ; 
Oh look ! oh shine ! oh let me die, and see ! ' 

In sonnet '73, the Poet has dared to steal a kiss whilst 
the lady was sleeping, and the aspect of her beauty, when 
ruddy with wrath, causes him to exclaim 

< heavenly fool ! thy most kiss-worthy face, 
Anger invests with such a lovely grace, 
That Anger's self I needs must kiss again ! ' 

This stolen kiss was the one immortalized in his famous 
81st sonnet, commencing 

6 kiss ! which dost those ruddy gems impart.' 

In one of the songs interspersed among the sonnets, the 
Poet also tells us of a stolen interview on the part of the 
two Lovers. 

6 In a grove most rich with shade, 
Where birds wanton music made ; 
Astrophel with Stella sweet, 
Did for mutual comfort meet ; 
Both within themselves oppressed, 
Both each in the other blest. 
Him great harms had taught much care ; 
Her fair neck a foul yoke bare : 
Wept they had ; alas the while ! v 

But now tears themselves did smile.' 

Here they had met, with eager eyes and hungry ears, 
asking to know all about each other in absence. 



A STOLEN LOVE-TRYST. 389 

f But, their tongues restrained from walking, 
Till their hearts had ended talking ! ' 

At length the lover pleads — 

' Stella, sovereign of my joy, 
Fair triumph er of annoy ; 
Stella, star of heavenly fire, 
Stella, loadstar of desire : 
Stella, in whose shining eyes, 
Are the lights of Cupid's skies : 
Stella, whose voice when it speaks, 
Senses all asunder breaks ; 
Stella, whose voice when it singeth, 
Angels to acquaintance bringeth ; 
Stella, in whose body is 
Writ each character of bliss, 
Whose face all, all beauty passeth 
Save thy mind, which it surpasseth, 
Grant, grant — but speech alas ! 
Fails me, fearing on to pass ; 
Grant — oh me, what am I saying ? 
But no fault there is in praying ! 

Stella replies, and 

£ In such wise she love denied 
As yet love it signified.' 

For whilst telling him to cease to sue, she says his grief 
doth grieve her worse than death, and 

6 If that any thought in me 
Can taste comfort but of thee, 
Let me feed, with hellish anguish 
Joyless, helpless, endless languish ! 
Therefore, Dear, this no more move 
Lest, tho' I leave not thy love, 
Which too deep in me is framed, 
I should blush when thou art named.' 

Thus we have it upon Sidney's testimony, that the lady 
triumphed in her purity, whilst acknowledging him to be 



390 SBAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the natural lord of her love. The conditions on which 
she was his, are stated in sonnet 69. 

6 joy too high for my low style to show, 

bliss fit for a nobler state than me ! 

Envy put out thine eyes, lest thou do see 

What oceans of delight in me do flow. 

My friend that oft saw'st thro' all masks of woe, 

Come, come, and let me pour myself on thee. 

Grone is the winter of my misery ; 

My Spring appears ; see what here doth grow ! 

For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine, 

Of her high heart given me the monarchy : 

I, I, oh ! I may say that she is mine : 

And tho' she give but thus condition ly 

This realm of bliss, while virtuous course I take, 
No kings be crown'd but they some covenants make.' 

The marriage of Penelope Devereux with Lord Eich, 
appears to have been promoted by the Earl of Huntingdon, 
then Lord President of the North, who was a great friend of 
the family, a relative also, and one of the guardians of the 
young Earl of Essex. The sisters, Penelope and Dorothy, 
sometimes resided in his house. In a letter addressed to 
Lord Burghley, the other guardian, March 10th, 1580, 
the Earl of Huntingdon proposed that a match should be 
made between the Lady Penelope and the young Lord 
Eich, he ' being a proper gentleman, and in years very 
suitable.' * In August of the same year, Essex informs 
Burghley that he is about to leave Cambridge for a time, 
on purpose to accompany Lord Eich, 'who, for many 
causes not unknown ' to the guardian, was very dear to 
him. The handing over of the Lady Penelope to this 
Lord Cloten, was then about to be completed. 

In his ' Epistle to the King,' with which the Earl of 
Devonshire accompanied the ' Discourse ' written by him 
in defence of his marriage with Lady Eich, the case is 

1 Lanscl M&&, 31, f, 40, 



STELLA'S FORCED MARRIAGE. 391 

thus put on behalf of the ' poor lost sheep,' shut out of the 
fold, as he calls his wife. 'A lady of great birth and 
virtue, being in the power of her friends, was by them 
married against her will unto one against whom she did 
protest at the very solemnity, and ever after ; between 
whom, from the first day, there ensued continual discord, 
altho' the same fears that forced her to marry, constrained 
her to live with him. Instead of a comforter, he did 
study in all things to torment her ; and by fear and fraud 
did practise to deceive her of her dowry ; and tho' he 
forbore to offer her any open wrong, restrained with the 
aWe of her Brother's powerfulness, yet as he had not in 
long time before (the death of Essex) in the chiefest 
duty of a husband used her as his wife, so presently after 
his death, he did put her to a stipend, and abandoned her 
without pretence of any cause, but his own desire to live 
without her.' It was, says Moimtjoy, after Lord Eich had 
withdrawn himself from her bed for the space of twelve 
years, that he did ' by persuasions and threatening^, move 
her to consent unto a divorce, and to confess a fault with 
a nameless stranger ! ' 

Two years after the marriage of Penelope Devereux 
with Lord Eich, Philip Sidney married the daughter of 
Sir Francis Walsingham, but if we are to trust the son- 
nets, and poetry is often true to the deepest truth, his 
love for Lady Eich, and her love for him, must have sur- 
vived the marriage of both. Sidney was struck down with 
his mortal wound at Zutphen, on the 22nd of September, 
1586, and he died on the 17th of the October following. 

His widow was again married, this time to the Earl of 
Essex, in the year 1590. She thus became sister to Lady 
Eich, Sidney's first love. The sonnets in which Sidney 
had proclaimed his passion were first published in the 
next year. And, as a curious illustration of the manners 
of the time, Spenser in a new Volume of Poems printed 
in 1595, also celebrated the loves of ' Astrophel and 



392 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Stella,' and inscribed the poem 'to the most beautiful 
and virtuous Lady, the Countess of Essex.' Thus Sidney, 
having lost his first love, and being in all likelihood mar- 
ried at the time, was not only deeply in love with the wife 
of another man, but sang of it in fervent verse, and rejoiced 
in it, ' tho' nations might count it shame,' and, after his 
death, his friend, the Poet Spenser, publishes an apotheosis 
of this passion, and respectfully dedicates his poem to 
Sidney's widow, who had now become LadyEich's sister! 
In applying the latter sonnets of Shakspeare to the 
character of Lady Eich, it will be well to recall this 
puzzling state of things, in relation to the sonnets of Sid- 
ney and the poetry of Spenser. Spenser introduces Lady 
Eich as ' Stella' in his ' Colin Clout's come home again' — 

6 Ne less praiseworthy Stella, do I read, 
Tho' nought my praises of her needed are, 
Whom verse of noblest Shepherd, lately dead, 
Hath praised and raised above each other star.' 

And in his ' Astrophel ; a pastoral Elegy upon the Death 
of the most noble and valourous Knight, Sir Philip Sidney,' 
he has caught up for immortality that early love of Sidney's 
for Lady Eich, with the tenderness of its dewy dawn about 
it, and the purple bloom of young desire. Many maidens, 
says the Poet, would have delighted in his love, but 

' For one alone he cared, for one he sigh't, 
His life's desire, and his dear love's delight. 
Stella the fair, the fairest star in sky, 
As fair as Venus or the fairest fair ; 
A fairer star saw never living eye 
Shoot her sharp-pointed beams thro' purest air : 
Her he did love, her he alone did honour, 
His thoughts, his rhymes, his songs were all upon her. 

To her he vowed the service of his days, 
On her he spent the riches of his wit, 
For her he made hymns of immortal praise, 
Of only her he sung, he thought, he writ.' 



SPENSER'S < ASTROPHEL AND STELLA.' 393 

This ' gentle Shepherd born in Arcady,' was engaged in 
hunting, on foreign soil, in a forest wide and waste, where 
he was wounded by a wild beast. There he lay bleeding 
to death, 

i While noue was nigh his eyelids up to close, 
And kiss his lips like faded leaves of rose.' 
At length he was found by some shepherds, who stopped 
his wound, though too late, and bore him to his ' dearest 
love,' his Stella, who, when she saw the sorry sight, 
\ Her y ellow locks, that shone so bright and long, 
As sunny beams in fairest summer's day, 
She fiercely tore, and with outrageous wrong 
From her red cheeks the roses rent away. 
His pallid face impictured with death, 
She bathed oft with tears and dried oft ; 
And with sweet kisses sucked the wasting breath 
Out of his lips, like lilies, pale and soft.' 

He dies, and her spirit at once follows his ! 

( To prove that death their hearts cannot divide, 
Which living were in love so firmly tied.' 

6 The Grods, which all things see, this same beheld, 
And pitying this pair of lovers true, 
Transformed them there lying on the field 
Into one flower that is both red and blue ; 
It first grows red, and then to blue doth fade, 
Like Astrophel, which thereinto was made. 

' And in the midst thereof a star appears, 
As fairly formed as any star in skies, 
Resembling Stella in her freshest years, 
Forth-darting beams of beauty from her eyes ; 
And all the day it standeth full of dew, 
Which is the tears that from her eyes did flow. 

6 That herb of some Starlight is called by name, 
Of others Penthia, tho' not so well ; 
But thou, wherever thou dost find the same, 
From this day forth do call it Astrophel : 
And whensoever thou it up dost take, 
Do pluck it softly, for that shepherd's sake.' 



394 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

This representation was most unfair to Sidney's wife, 
who followed him to the Netherlands in June or July ; 
was near him in his pain, to soothe him and kiss the fading 
lips, and when the knitted brows smoothed out nobly into 
rest, she was there ' his eyelids up to close.' This thought, 
however, did not trouble the serene Spenser. 

We are not told in prose how Lady Eich felt and bore 
the death of Sidney, but Lodowick Bryskett, in his 
' Mourning Muse of Thestylis ' 1 professes to give an ac- 
count of her bearing and appearance under the affliction. 
He says 'twas piteous to hear her plaints, and see her 
'heavy mourning cheere,' while from 'those two bright 
stars, to him sometime so dear, her heart sent drops of 
pearl.' He continues in some quotable lines — 

6 If Venus when she wailed her dear Adonis slain, 
Aught moved in thy fierce heart compassion of her woe, 
Her noble Sister's plaints, her sighs and tears among, 
Would sure have made thee mild, and inly rue her pain : 
Aurora half so fair herself did never show, 
When, from old Tython's bed, she weeping did arise. 
The blinded archer-boy, like lark in shower of rain, 
Sat bathing of his wings, and glad the time did spend 
Under those crystal drops, which fell from her fair eyes ; 
And at their brightest beams him proyned in lovely wise. 
Yet sorry for her grief, which he could not amend, 
The gentle boy 'gan wipe her eyes, and clear those lights, 
Those lights thro' which his glory and his conquest shines.' 

We shall not find a prettier picture of Love and Lady 
Eich ! 

Spenser, in his poem on the death of Astrophel, 
makes Stella follow ' her mate like turtle chaste.' Lady 
Eich did nothing of the kind in reality ; it might 

1 ' Thestylis' says the Countess of Pembroke in her l doleful Lay of 
Clarinda/ written on Sidney's death, was 

1 A swain 
Of gentle wit, and dainty-sweet device, 
Whom Astrophel full dear did entertain 
Whilst here he lived, and held in passing price.' 



LADY RICH'S PROUD SPIRIT. 395 

have been better for her if she had. Her position was 
now most perilous ; one that made her beauty a fatal 
gift. Much that was noble in her nature seems to have 
passed away with the noble Sidney. In this sense 
there may have been some allegorical shadow of the 
truth in the Poet's representation. There was no love in 
her own home to kindle at the heart of her life, and 
touch the face of it with happy health, and hallow her 
superb outward beauty with the light that shines sacredly 
within, or gives the expression from above, whilst the 
well-known fact of Sidney's love for her, and the halo of 
romance which his poetry had created round her name, 
were but too likely to expose her more than ever to fresh 
temptations. To these sooner or later she undoubtedly 
yielded ; and ' not finding that satisfaction at home she 
ought to have received, she looked for it abroad, where 
she ought not to find it.' Whether Mountjoy was the 
first cause of serious quarrel betwixt her and Lord Eich, 
is not on record. But according to his statement, it 
must have been as early as 1592 or 1593, that Lord 
Eich, either with or without just cause, withdrew himself 
from his marriage bed. He soon found that the wife he 
had bought had to be paid for. Her friends had forced 
her to the altar, but there was the after-life to be lived 
with her, face to face, when the same friends could not 
help him. She was not the kind of woman to bear her 
sorrow proudly silent, or receive his unkindness meekly. 
His morose selfishness was not calculated to draw out her 
better part. Her's was not the nature from which the 
sweetness is to be crushed by treading on ; not the spirit 
to submit to a passive degradation. 

i He dreamed a bonny blooming Rose to wed ; 
He woke to find a briar in his bed.' 

He caught at the flower of which he had obtained legal 
possession, and he fell among the thorns. These must 



396 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

have pricked him unmercifully at times with the finger 
pointings of scorn, the darts of her wild wit, and the 
sharp thrusts of the very sting of bitterness. 

In a letter written by this poor Lord to Essex, Sept. 11th, 
1595, we perceive how uneasily he wriggles on one of his 
thorns ! He is suspicious of the contents of his wife's 
letters, which he dares not intercept or open. 

6 My Lord, — ■ I acknowledge with all thankfulness, your 
Lordship's favour, signified by your letters, which I received 
yesterday by my man ; entreating leave also to put you in mind 
to remember your letters into Staffordshire to your sister, and to 
the other 'party. I met this messenger from thence, but durst not 
intercept the letters he brings, for fear these troublesome times 
will bring forth shortly a parliament, and so perhaps a law to 
make it treason to break open letters written to any my lords 
of the Council, whereby they are freely privileged to receive 
writings from other men's wives without any further question, 
and have full authority to see every man's wife at their 
pleasure. A lamentable thing, that this injustice should thus 
reign in this wicked age. I only entreat your Lordship, that 
as you hear anything farther of that matter I wrote to you of, 
I may have your pleasure and farther directions. And so, com- 
mending your Lordship to the blessed tuition of the Almighty, 
I remain your Lordship's poor brother to command in all 
honesty. 

Ko. Rich.' 1 

It is possible that the ' other party ' of this letter may 
have been Mountjoy, and ' that matter' referred to the 
beginning of his liaison with Lady Eich. If so, Essex 
did not trouble himself much in the matter, he rather 
winked at the freedom of his sister in trying to exchange 
the ' foul yoke her fair neck bore,' for the solace of her 
lover's arm. He had his own designs upon Mountjoy. 
He could have cared little for the lady's morals, to have 
brought home to her close acquaintanceship, and placed 
on the most familiar footing, the sparkling, clever, vain, 

1 Among Anthony Bacon's Papers. 



SIGNOR ANTONIO PEREZ. 397 

and presumptuous Antonio Perez, the Spanish renegade, 
whose intimacy with her son Francis made good old 
Lady Bacon hold up her hands in horror. ' Though I 
pity your brother,' she writes in a letter to Anthony 
Bacon, 1 ' yet so long as he pities not himself, but keepeth 
that bloody Perez, yea, as a coach companion and bed 
companion ; a proud, profane, costly fellow, whose being 
about him I verily fear the Lord God doth mislike, and 
doth less bless your brother in credit and otherwise in his 
health ; surely I am utterly discouraged, and make con- 
science further to undo myself to maintain such wretches 
as he is, that never loved your brother but for his own 
credit, living upon him.' Lady Bacon felt more care for 
her son than Essex did for his sister. 

A pretty fellow was this Perez to fill the situation as- 
signed to him, in the following letter from Mr. Standen to 
Mr. Bacon, which also serves to show us something of the 
uncertain temperament and incalculable turns of the Lady 
Rich. The letter was written in March or April, 1595. 

* Eight Worshipful, — As we were at supper, my Lady 
Rich, Signor Perez, Sir Nicholas Clyfford, and myself; there 
came upon a sudden into the chamber, my Lord and Sir Robert 
Sidney, and there was it resolved that Signor Perez must be, 
to-morrow morning at eight of the clock, with my Lord in 
Court ; after which my Lord means to dine at Walsingham 
House, and in the way, to visit Mr. Anthony Bacon ; which, my 
Lady Rich understanding, said she would go also to dine with 
them at Walsingham's. And my Lord, asking how she would 
be conveyed thither, she answered, that she would go in their 
companies, and in coach with them, and, arrived at Mr. Bacon's 
house, and there disembarked my Lord, her brother, Sir Robert 
should bring her to Walsingham's, and return back with the coach 
for my Lord, her brother. All which I write unto you, Sir, by 
way of advice, to the end you be not taken unarmed. Women's 
discretions being uncertain, it may be she will not dismount, 
and the contrary also will fall out. Now, it is resolved, that 

1 Birch, i. 143. 



398 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Mr. Perez shall not depart, for that my Lord hath provided 
him here with the same office those eunuchs have in Turkey, 
which is to have the custody of the fairest dames ; so that he 
wills me to write, that for the bond he hath with my Lord, he 
cannot refuse that office.' l 

In a postscript to one of her letters to Anthony Bacon, 
elated May 3rd, 1596, Lady Eich being at the time in a 
' solitary place where no sound of any news can come,' 
entreats him to let her know something of the world. 
Amongst other things, she would fain hear what has 
become of his wandering neighbour, Signor Perez. This 
flattering knave and charming hypocrite, who had the 
insinuating grace of the serpent, the subtilty and impu- 
dence of lachimo, was on such familiar terms with Lady 
Eich as to write the following letter to her, March 26th, 
1595. 

'Signor Wilson hath given me news of the health of your 
Ladyships, the three sisters and goddesses, as in particular, that 
all three have amongst yourselves drunk and caroused unto 
Nature, in thankfulness of what you owe unto her, in that she 
gave you not those delicate shapes to keep them idle, but rather 
that you should push forth unto us here many buds of those divine 
beauties. To these gardeners I wish all happiness for so good 
tillage of their grounds. Sweet ladies mine, many of these 
carouses ! wbat a bower I have full of sweets of the like 
tillage and trimmage of gardens.' 2 

The clever scamp goes on to say that he has written a 
book full of such secrets as some persons would not like 
to have knoAvn. He appears to intimate that on his re- 
turn to England, these people must pay or he shall pub- 
lish, so that with the one means or the other, he will live 
by his book. ' My Book,' he says, ' will serve my turn. 
But I will not be so good cheap this second time. My 
receipts will cost dearer, wherefore let every one provide ! ' 

1 Birch, vol. i. p. 229. 2 Shane MSS., 4115. 



LADY ETCH AND LORD MOUNTJOY. 399 

Iii the December of this year 1595, we learn by Bow- 
laud White's Letters that there was to be a christening at 
Sir Bobert Sidney's, to which Lady Bich and Lord Mount- 
joy were both invited. ' I went to Holborn,' says White, 
8 and found my Lord Mountjoy at his house. I said my 
lady sent me unto him, to desire him, both in your name 
and hex's, to christen your son that was newly born, which 
he very honourably promised to do ; and when I told him 
mv Lady Bich was godmother, he was much pleased at 
it!' 

Lady Bich had willingly agreed to be a godmother. 
White told her that both the mother and child had the 
measles, ' to which she suddenly replied, that after eight 
days there was no danger to be feared, and therefore it 
shall be no occasion to keep me from doing Sir Bobert 
Sidney and my lady a greater kindness. When I saw her 
so desperate, I humbly besought her Ladyship to take a 
longer time to think upon the danger, which she did till 
that afternoon, and then coming to her to Essex House, 
she told me she was resolved.' Her ladyship was not 
afraid of the measles. And yet the christening was de- 
ferred. Writing later in the 'month, White reports Lady 
Bich to be in Town, but ' the christening is put off till Wed- 
nesday, New Year's Eve.. She says that my Lord Comp- 
ton desired her to defer it till then, because of some urgent 
business he hath in the country, that will keep him away 
till Tuesday night; but I do rather think it to be a tetter that 
suddenly broke out in Iter fair white forehead, which will 
not be well in jive or six days, that keeps your son from 
being christened. But my Lady Bich's desires are obeyed 
as commandments by my Lady.' 1 Evidently the lady 
wished to look her best, and show no spot on the face of 
her beauty, in the presence of my Lord Mountjoy. The 
interest which these two mutually inspired kept increasing;, 
until at length their criminal intercourse was publicly 

1 Sydney Memoirs, vol. i. p. 385. 



400 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

known; the husband being looked upon as no impedi- 
ment. Johnstone intimates that the patience of Lord 
Eich as a husband was more wondered at than admired ; 
and that his strange conduct in retaining his wife, after 
being perfectly well aware of her connection with Lord 
Mountj oy, was thought anything but prudent. But the 
morality of the time does not appear to have been greatly 
outraged. The Queen showed the first sign of disapproval. 
Camden records the fact, that in 1600, Lady Eich ' had 
lost the Queen's favour for abusing her husband's bed.' 
This he softened, on revision of his work, to ' Quw, mariti 
thorum violare suspecta.' 

Let us now glance for a moment at the Lady Eich in 
another of the many-coloured lights in which she was seen 
by her contemporaries. In November, 1598, Bartholomew 
Young, a poet of the time, — he who is the largest con- 
tributor to England's Helicon, — inscribed to her his Trans- 
lation of the Diana of George of Montemayor, with the 
following dedication, — 

* To the Eight Honourable and my very good lady, the Lady 
Eich. 

( Eight Honourable, such are the apparent defects of art and 
judgement in this new pourtraied Diana, that their discovery 
must needs make me blush, and abase the work, unless with 
undeserved favour erected upon the high and shining pillar 
of your honourable protection, they may seem to the beholder 
less or none at all. The glory whereof as with reason it can 
no ways be thought worthy, but by boldly adventuring upon 
the apparent demonstration of your magnificent mind, wherein 
all virtues have their proper seat, and on that singular desire, 
knowledge, and delight, wherewith your Ladyship entertaineth, 
embraceth, and affecteth honest endeavours, learned languages, 
and this particular subject of Diana, 1 warranted by all virtue 
and modesty, as Collin, in his French dedicatory to the illus- 
trious Prince Lewis of Lorraine, at large setteth down and com- 
mandeth ; now presenting it to so sovereign a light, and relying 

1 From which Sidney had made some translations. 



LADY RICH'S LOVE OF LITERATURE. 40L 

on a gracious acceptance, what can be added more to the full 
content, desire, and perfection of Diana, and of her unworthy 
interpreter, (that hath in English here exposed her to the view 
of strangers), than for their comfort and defence to be armed 
with the honourable titles and countenance of so high and ex- 
cellent a Patroness. But as, certain years past, my honourable 
good Lady, in a public show at the Middle Temple, where your 
honourable presence, with many noble Lords and fair Ladies, 
graced and beautified those sports, it befel to my lot, in that 
worthy assembly, unworthily to perform the part of a French 
orator, by a dedicated speech in the same tongue, and that 
amongst so many good conceits, and such general skill in 
tongues, all the while I was rehearsing it, there was not any 
whose nature, judgment ana censure in that language I feared 
and suspected more than your Ladyship's, whose attentive ear 
and eye daunted my imagination with the apprehension of my 
disabilities, and your Ladyship's perfect knowledge in the same. 
Now, once again, in this Translation out of Spanish (which 
language also with the present matter being so well known to 
your Ladyship), whose reprehension and severe sentence of all 
others may I more justly fear, than that which, Honourable 
Madame, at election you may herein duly give or with favour 
take away? I have no other means, than the humble insinua- 
tion of it to your most Honourable name and clemency, most 
humbly beseeching the same pardon to all those faults, which 
to your learned and judicious views shall occur. Since then, 
for pledge of the dutiful and zealous desire I have to serve your 
Ladyship, the great disproportion of your most noble estate to 
the quality of my poor condition, can afford nothing else but 
this small present, my prayer shall always importune the hea- 
vens for the happy increase of your high and worthy degree, 
and for the full accomplishment of your most honourable 
desires. 

'Your Honour's 

e Most humbly devoted, 

e Barthol. Young.' 

Such was the language of literature addressing Lady 
Kich, in the year 1598. 

Troubled times were now coming for the house of 



402 . SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

Essex ; the clouds were gathering fast in which the star 
of Lady Eich was to suffer temporary eclipse. 

We may be satisfied that both Essex and his ambitious 
sister were continually haunted with the thought of his 
relationship to Elizabeth being as near as that of Queen 
Mary Stuart's son, and that their blood would be running 
too red and high with this royal reminder, which begat 
the most tantalizing hopes ; sang with insidious sug- 
gestion in his ear, and secretly undermined his whole 
life, and that Lady Eich fanned this fire in her brother's 
blood, and fed the foolish aspirations of his perturbed 
spirit. Possibly the early intrigue of Essex and his sister 
with James in 1589, 1 in which the ' Weary Knight ' ex- 
pressed himself as so tired of the ' thrall he now lives in,' 
so desirous of a change, and offered himself, his sister, and 
all their friends in anything he (James) had to ' do against 
the Queen,' arose in great part from their thinking that 
a change, if brought about turbulently, would give Essex 
a chance of taking the throne. Quite as unlikely things 
had occurred in the national History. Stowe remarks on 
the tendency of the Kentish Men to be swayed lightly at 
the change of Princes. 

It is certain that Essex's sister was with him in his 
schemes, although she personally escaped the conse- 
quences. The sonnets of Shakspeare hint as much. And 
on the morning of the fatal Sunday, when Essex and his 
armed followers rushed through the streets on their mad 
mission, she was moving about like the very bird of the 
storm : her spirit hovers visibly above the coming wave 
of commotion. The Earl of Bedford (Edward the 3rd 
Earl) in his letter of exculpation to the Lords of the 



1 In a communication to Burghley, made by Mr. Thomas Eowler from 
Edinburgh, October 7th, 1589, he says of Lady Rich, ' She is very pleasant 
in her letters, and writes the most part thereof in her brother's behalf. 
" He," the King, " commended much the fineness of her wit, the invention, 
and well-writing." ' Mardin, 640. 



LADY RICH AS REBEL. 403 

Council, 1 relates how Lady Kick came to his house in the 
midst of the sermon, and told him that the Earl of Essex 
desired to speak with him. When he got to Essex House, 
he found out how he was caught, and he declares that 
when the sally was made, he secretly escaped down a 
cross street, and made his way home again. There can 
be no doubt that her ladyship was a clever, determined 
whipper-in for the Essex cause. The Earl of Nottingham 
writing to Lord Mountjoy on the behaviour of Essex after 
the trial, tells how he spared none in 'letting us know 
how continually they laboured him about it.' And now, 
said he, I must accuse one who is most nearest to me, my 
sister who did continually urge me on with telling me how 
all my friends and followers thought me a coward^ and 
that 1 had lost my valour? Truly his sister had loved 
him not wisely, but too well. 'It is well known,' she 
said, c that I have been more like a slave than a sister ; 
which proceeded out of my exceeding love, rather than 
his authority.' 3 This occurs in her letter of defence, 
written to the Earl of Nottingham, in the postscript of 
which there is a natural touch. ' Your Lordship's noble 
disposition forceth me to deliver my grief unto you, hear- 
ing a report that some of these malicious tongues have 
sought to wrong a worthy friend of yours. I know the 
most of them did hate him for his zealous following the 
service of her Majesty, and beseech you to pardon my 
presuming thus much, though I hope his enemies have 
no power to harm him.' This worthy friend of the Earl's, 
about whom the lady is so anxious, was Lord Mountjoy. 

On the accession of James to the English throne, the 
star of Lady Eich shone once more in the Court horizon. 
We find pompous John Elorio among the first to hail its 
re-arising. She was one of the five noble ladies to whom 
he erected his five altars, and burnt incense, when he in- 
scribed to them his Translation of Montaigne's Essays, in 

1 Birch Add, MSS. } 4160. 2 Brewer, p. 17. 3 Brewer, 20. 

dd2 



404 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

1603 ; her ladyship being one of those from whom he 
had received countenance and favour ; ' one of those 
whose magnanimity and magnificent frank nature have 
so kindly bedewed my earth when it was sunburnt ; so 
gently thawed it when frost-bound, that I were even more 
senseless than earth, if I returned not some fruit in good 
measure.' 

The new reign opened with a general restoration of 
Essex's friends. Lady Eich was one of the six noble per- 
sonages chosen to proceed to the Scottish border for the 
purpose of meeting and conducting the new Queen to the 
English Capital. Lady Anne Clifford, in a note to her 
narrative, says the Queen showed no favour to the elderly 
ladies, when the meeting took place, but to my Lady Eich 
and such like company. The new Queen was in some 
respects a kindred spirit, and made a favourite companion 
of Lady Eich. She was, says the French Ambassador 
Eosni, afterwards Duke de Sully, of a bold and enter- 
prising nature ; loved pomp and splendour, tumult and 
intrigue. With such a Queen, and in such a Court, Lady 
Eich was again in her glory. Her status in the new 
Court was defined by special license. On the occasion of 
the Eoyal procession from the Tower to Whitehall, March 
15th, 1604, her place was appointed at the head of four- 
teen Countesses, who all bore most noble names. 

The King granted to Lady Eich ' the place and rank of 
the ancientest Earl of Essex, called Bouchier, whose heir 
her father was, she having by her marriage, according to 
the customs of the laws of honour, ranked herself accord- 
ing to her husband's barony. By this gracious grant, she 
took rank of all the Baronesses of the kingdom, and of all 
Earls' daughters, except Arundel, Oxford, Northumber- 
land, and Shrewsbury.' The Earl of Worcester, writing 
to the Earl of Shrewsbury in 1603, 1 says, in reporting 
news of the Court, ' This day the King dined abroad with 

1 Lodges Illustrations, vol. iii. 



LADY RICH AGAIN AT COUKT. 405 

the Florentine Ambassador, who taketh now his leave 
very shortly. He was with the King at the Play at night, 

and snpped with my Lady Eitchie in her chamber 

We have ladies of clivers degrees of favour ; some for the 
private chamber, some for the bed-chamber, and some for 
neither certain. The plotting and malice among them is 
such, that I think Envy hath tied an invisible snake about 
most of their necks, to sting one another to death.' 

The Lady Eich would be able to hold her own, and feel 
perfectly at home in the Court of James and Oriana, where 
the morals were loose, and the manners free, and her sin- 
gular beauty shone nightly unparagoned a&Siblla Veneris. 
6 The Court,' Wilson says, ' being a continued Maskerado, 
where she, the Queen, and her ladies, like so many sea- 
nymphs or Nereides, appeared often in various dresses, to 
the ravishment of the beholders ; the King himself being 
not a little delighted with such fluent elegancies as made 
the night more glorious than the day.*' ' Their apparel 
was rich,' says Carleton, speaking of the ladies in one of 
these masques, ' but too light and courtezan-like for such 
great ones.' At the masque which followed the marriage of 
Sir Philip Herbert, we learn by Winwood's Memorials, 1 
that 4 there was no small loss that night of chains and 
jewels, and many great ladies were made shorter by the 
skirts, and were very well served that they could keep cut 
no better.' Also, Carleton, in his letter to Mr. Winwood, 
giving an account of the marriage, supplies us with a 
curious picture of the Court and King, and the manners 
of both. He says, ' the Bride and Bridegroom were 
lodged in the Council Chamber, where the King, in his 
shirt and night-gown, gave them a reveille-matin, before 
they were up, and spent a good time in or upon the bed, 
choose which you will believe.' 

And all went merrily for the lady Eich. So Ion a- as 
she only lived in adultery with Mountjoy, her honoured 

1 Vol. ii. p. 43. 



406 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

position in Court and society was unquestioned. But 
Mountj oy was conscientious enough to wish to make her 
his wife, and obtain the Church's blessing on the bond 
which had held them together so long, if so loosely. He 
desired to make his wife an honest woman, and his 
children legitimate. By an agreement among the several 
parties a judgment was obtained from the Ecclesiastical 
Court. Lady Eich was divorced from her husband, and 
the Earl of Devonshire immediately married her. But, 
the divorce proved to be only a legal separation ; not a 
sufficient warrant for a subsequent marriage. The mo- 
tives of Mountj oy were of the purest and most manly, 
but an oversight had assuredly been made in interpreting 
the law. This attempt to make the Lady Eich his own 
lawful wife, drew down on the head of Mountj oy a burst- 
ing thunder-cloud. The Court world which had looked 
on so complacently whilst the law of God was broken full 
in its sight, was horrified at this violation of the law of 
man, even though it were done unwittingly. The King was 
moved to such anger that he tolcl Mountj oy he had ' pur- 
chased a fair woman witli a black soul ! ' others chimed 
in, most indignantly rejecting the lady's right to become 
private property ! Yet, this ' fair woman with a black 
soul,' had, whilst merely living in open criminal inter- 
course, been accepted as the light and glory of the Court. 
Mountj oy pleaded with manly tenderness and Christian 
charity for his wife, and tried to justify his act, but 
in vain. He told the King that 4 the laws of moral 
honesty, which in things not prohibited by God, I have 
ever held inviolable, do only move me now to prefer 
my own conscience before the opinion of the world.' In 
spite of which noble sentiment, his heart broke, trying to 
bear the sad lot that had befallen him. ' Grief of unsuc- 
cessful love,' says his secretary Moryson, ' brought him to 
his last end.' He died within four months of his marriage, 
April 3, 1606. 



EARL OF DEVONSHIRE'S DEATH. 407 

Sir Dudley Carleton, writing to Mr. J. Chamberlain, at 
Ware Park, on Good Friday, April 17, 1606, says : — 

6 My L. of Devonshire's funeral will be performed in West- 
minster, about three weeks hence. There is much dispute 
among the heralds, whether- his lady's arms should be impaled 
with his, which brings in question the lawfulness of the marriage, 
and that is said to depend on the manner of the divorce. Her 
estate is much threatened with the King's account, but it is 
thought she will find good friends, for she is visited daily by 
the greatest, who profess much love to her for her Earl's sake; 
meantime, amongst the meaner sort you may guess in what 
credit she is, when Mrs, Bluenson complains that she had made 
her cousin of Devonshire shame her and her whole kindred. 

2nd May. — It is determined that his arms shall be set up 
single, without his wife's.' : 

The first publication of the dramatic poet, John Ford, 
was a poem on the death of the Earl of Devonshire, 
printed in 1606, entitled ' Fame's Memorial,' and dedi- 
cated 4 To the rightly Eight Honourable Lady, the Lady 
Penelope, Countess of Devonshire.' Some of the lines are 
interesting : — 

1 Linked in the graceful bonds of dearest life, 
Unjustly termed disgraceful, he enjoyed 
Content's abundance ; happiness was rife, 
Pleasure secure ; no troubled thought annoyed 
His comforts sweet : toil was in toil destroyed ; 
Mangre the throat of malice, spite of spite, 
He lived united to his heart's delight : 

( His heart's delight, who was the beauteous Star 
Which beautified the value of our land ; 
The lights of whose perfections brighter are 
Than all the lamps which in the lustre stand 
Of heaven's forehead by Discretion scanned ; 
Wit's ornament! Earth's love ! Love's paradise ! 
A saint divine, a beauty fairly wise: 

1 S, P. O. 



408 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

e A beauty fairly wise, wisely discreet 
In winking mildly at the tongue of rumour ; 
A saint merely divine, divinely sweet 
In banishing the pride of idle humour : 
Not relishing the vanity of tumour, 
More than to a female of so high a race ; 
With meekness bearing sorrow's sad disgrace.' 

It is difficult to resist smiling at the idea of making the 
Lady Eich a sort of winking saint. The Poet is nearer 
the mark when he likens her, in another stanza, as a wit 
among women, to a nightingale amidst a quire of com- 
mon song birds. 

Poor Lady Eich ! Her fate was as full of contrast as 
the moral mixture of her nature, or the outward show of 
her twilight beauty. The most striking opposites met in 
her complexion, her character, and her life ; as though the 
parental elements in her were not well or kindly mixed. 
Like Beatrice, she seems to have been born in ' a merry 
hour when a star danced,' over her father's house ; born 
to be clothed in the purple of choicest speech a poet's love 
can lavish ; to sit as a proud queen in the hearts of some 
who were among the kingliest of men, and be crowned 
with such a wreath of amaranth as descends upon the 
brow of but few among women. One of the bright 
particular stars of two Courts ; the beloved idol of two 
heroes; one of the proudest, wittiest, most fascinating 
women of her time ; the Beauty, in singing of whom, the 
poets vied like rival lovers, as they strung their harps 
with ' Stella's ' golden hair, and strove together in praise of 
the starry midnight of those eyes that were so darkly lus- 
trous with their rich eastern look. And her day of 
stormy splendour appears to have ended in the saddest 
way imaginable ; closing in impenetrable night : all the 
pride of life suddenly laid low in the dust of death, and so 
dense a darkness about her grave, that we cannot make 
out her name. 



A STAR SUDDENLY GONE OUT. 409 

Her mother, the ' little Western Flower,' lively- 
blooded Lettice Knollys, ' She that did supply the wars 
with thunder and the Court with stars,' lived on in 
her lustihood to a green and grey old age, walking 
erectly, to appearance, after all the crookednesses of her 
career ; her sunset going down with a mellow and tran- 
quil shine, and dying at last amidst her mourners in 
the very odour of sanctity. But the daughter vanishes 
from view in a moment, while yet the star of her life rode 
high, and we are left in the darkness all the blinder 
for the late dazzle of her splendour. She who had been 
the cynosure of all eyes, passes out of sight almost un- 
noticed, and one who was among the first in fame becomes 
suddenly unknown. Of all who were so well known in 
their life-time, she surely must have been the least re- 
membered in her death. It looks as though the disap- 
pearance had been intentional; as though she had taken' 
the black death-veil, and drawn the dark curtains about 
her, and that by a tacit agreement betwixt her and the 
world, her name and reputation should be buried with 
her body, as one of those, of whom the Poet sings, who 
were 

6 Merely born to bloom and drop ; 
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly 

were the crop : 
What of soul was left I wonder, when the kissing had to 

stop ? 
(i Dust and ashes" so you creak it, and I want the heart to 

scold. 
Dear, dead women, with such hair, too — what's become 

of all the gold 
Used to hang and brush their bosoms ? I feel chilly and 

grown old.' 1 

So completely did Lady Eich pass out of sight that not a 
portrait of her remains. Yet she was often painted, and 

1 'A Toccata of Galuppi's.' 1 Robert Browning. 



410 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

there must have been various pictures of her extant at 
the time of her death. One of Burghley's secret agents, 
who writes to the English Minister from the Scottish 
Court, informs him on the 20th of October, 1589, that 
Eialta (Lady Eich) has sent the King her portrait. There 
is also a portrait of her mentioned, among the goods and 
chattels at Wanstead, in the inventory taken of Leicester's 
property after his death. But I have failed to trace 
either painting or engraving of Lady Eich at present 
in existence. i It is also most difficult to find any 
record of her out of poetry and the Sydney Memoirs. I 
know of but one mention of her death : it was disin- 
terred by Professor Craik only a few years ago from the 
Latin History of Eobert Johnstone (Historia Eerum Bri- 
tannicarum), published at Amsterdam in 1655. At page 
420, the writer relates that Devonshire, stung by the 
reproaches of the King, who told him he had purchased 
a fair woman with a black soul, broke down altogether 
and breathed his last in the arms of Lady Eich, passing 
away in the midst of her adorations, tears and kisses. 
And he adds that the lady, worn out with grief and 
lamentation, did not long survive him, but, laden with 
the robes and decorations of mourning, lay night and day 
stretched on the floor in a corner of her bed-chamber, 
refusing to be comforted, except by death. ' Happy pair,' 
he says, ' had but a legal union sanctified their glowing 
and constant love.' This is the only ray of light that 
pierces the gloom ; the only word that breaks the silence. 
In this dearth of recorded facts relating to the close of 
Lady Eich's life it is little marvel that a secret intrigue, 
such as I deduce from Shakspeare's Sonnets, should not 
have been elsewhere chronicled for posterity ; especially 

1 Her Ladyship must have "been painted in some of the Court processions 
as one of the principal Maids of Honour. Possibly her Portrait may turn up 
at the forthcoming Exhibition of National Portraits, amongst those that are 
anonymous or misnamed. 



A SECRET INTRIGUE. 411 

as it was a secret liistoiy. The liaison with Lord Mountjoy 
attracted all the public attention at the time. But it may 
be remembered that although Lady Eich was more closely 
attached to Lord Mountjoy in the years 1599 and 1600, 
for instance, than to her husband who, according to Mount- 
joy, had kept her from his bed for the space of twelve 
years before they finally and absolutely parted ; yet there 
was no bond that bound her to Mountjoy with inviolable 
ties when he was away, for example, with his army in 
Ireland ; nothing to hinder such an intrigue, if we consider 
the manners of the time and the morals of the lady. 
Mountjoy, we may be sure, was not the only ; noble ruin of 
her maoic' At the most he could but claim a share in her 
until he had made her his own, after her divorce from Lord 
Eich. This, indeed, he acknowledges bv his diffidence on 
the score of paternity, for, out of the five children assigned 
to him by Lady Eich, he only recognised and provided for 
three of them as his own. These five children were all 
born after the Lord Eich (on Mountjoy's own showing) 
had withdrawn himself from his lady's bed, and at least 
four of the five were born before the re-marriage of her 
Ladyship with Mountjoy. Here, then, is a father wanted. 
One of the two thus left unacknowledged was a daughter 
named Isabella. And curiously enough we find by let- 
ters in the State Papers Office, that in the year 1618 Wil- 
liam Earl of Pembroke, then Lord Chamberlain, is one of 
the persons most anxiously interested in the marriage of 
Lady Isabella Eich with Sir Thomas Smythe's son, which 
marriage, for reasons best known to the parties concerned, 
was effected without the knowledge of the young man's 
father. Mr. Chamberlain to Carleton, November 28th, 
1618, writes that 'die Lord Chamberlain and others have 
forwarded the marriage of Sir Thomas Smythe's son of 
eighteen, to Lady Isabella Eich, without knowledge of the 
father who, at them entreaty, has consented to receive 
her.' The Eev. Thomas Lorkins aives an account of the 



412 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

affair in his letter of January 5th, 1618-19, 'I forgot to 
acquaint you, in my former letter, with a matter that hath 
been here shuffled up between Sir Thomas Smythe's son and 
Mrs. Isabella Eich ; who, finding themselves both together 

at Sir Udal's, some few' days since, and liking well 

enough either the other, my Lord Chamberlain, who was 
there present, sent for his own Chaplain, to Barnard Castle, 
to make the matter sure by marrying them : who, making 
some difficulty, for that they had no license, his Lordship 
encouraged him, upon assurance of saving him harmless. 
So they were presently married ; and, from thence con- 
ducted to my Lord Southampton s to dinner, and to my Lady 
Bedford's to bed. Bui the father is a heavy man to see his 
son bestowed without Ms privity and consent' Camden says 
that young Smythe left England about eight months after 
the marriage, without taking leave of either Father or Mo- 
ther ; and Wood further affirms that he did so ' upon some 
discontent.' My inference is that the Lord Chamberlain 
had very private personal reasons for the interest he felt 
and showed in the marriage of Lady Isabella Eich. 

It is with a feeling of sadness that I have come to break 
that silence which Wordsworth has called a privilege of 
the grave, a right of the departed, and disturb the repose 
of Lady Eich, or wake the sleeping echoes of her name by 
reviving the errors that were laid in dark forgetfulness, all 
the more that the result is to prove another blot upon her 
fame as a woman. I would much rather have had to re- 
habilitate her character ; re-set her image in the likeness 
of that Stella who glowed in Sidney's eyes as ' that virtuous 
soul, sure heir of heavenly bliss ; ' this would have been 
far pleasanter than having to rake, as it were, in the dust 
of death for this fresh frailty of her life, and stir the cold 
quiet ashes for some cunningly- concealed spark of the old 
passionate fire. For no one can put together what is known 
of the lady's life, or see how it got all wrong at the begin- 
ning, how she missed her chance when she lost her first 



A CHARACTER OF MANY COLOURS. 413 

love — the husband on whom her father had set his heart — 
the man who was to become the flower of English nobility, 
and give to the national chivalry its crowning grace — 

e The Courtier's, Soldier's, Scholar's eye, tongue, sword, 
The expectancy and rose of the fair state, 
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form, 
The observed of all observers' — 

gentle and beloved Philip Sidney, and was handed over 
at so early an age to one of the most ignoble and sordid 
of men, without a feeling of pity for her unfortunate lot 
and mournful fate. One would not bear hardly on the poor, 
passionate, warm-hearted lady, who was thus wedded by 
family necessities to a cold-blooded brute, that had not 
soul enough to be sensible of his own disgrace, nor con- 
science enough to fight for his honour, but kept his wife 
because she was convenient to him, although he well knew 
of her leanings out of his house, and tortured her for years 
before he let her leave him altogether. 

And it is but right that I should point out how my 
reading of the latter sonnets does bear hardly on her 
by making so real and intensely personal that which 
was never meant to be identified. The sonnets I hold 
to have been written for the purpose of giving utterance 
to a youth's passion for a woman whose fame was such 
as to permit great latitude in speaking of her character 
in general. But it was never contemplated that they 
should be read as Shakspeare's own arraignment of 
Lady Eich on the score of immoral conduct. Something 
of this shape they assume : now we have the lady unveiled 
in public court and Shakspeare, as it were, in the witness- 
box. The lady must not be judged, however, without 
remembering who the speaker really is, how the sonnets 
were written, and that when the blackest charges were 
made, it was never thought she would be requested 
to lift her veil and have her face known as that of 



414 SHAKSPEABE'S SONNETS. 

Penelope Bich. In the other -novel readings, such as 
Elizabeth Vernon's Jealousy, I have been able to do 
justice to Shakspeare and free his character from some 
very vile imputations without doing injustice to anyone 
else. The latter sonnets will not permit such a pleasant 
solution of their poetic problem. But, in seeking to take 
the weight off the broad shoulders of our great Poet, one 
does not want it to fall with unnecessary force on the 
woman who already had more than enough to bear. 

Sidney has painted the Lady Eich as an Angel of Light. 
My reading, and the exigencies of William Herbert's case, 
make Shakspeare represent her as an Angel of Darkness. 
But the living woman in whom these two alternated, and 
out of which her nature was compounded — the woman 
who, with her tropical temperament and bleak lot in 
marriage, could yet remain the conqueror of Sidney and 
herself in such circumstances of peril as he has depicted 
in his- confessions — the woman who would fight for her 
husband through thick and thin, and hurry back to him 
if she heard he was ill, wait upon him and watch over 
him day and night from a sense of duty rather than a 
necessity of affection — the woman who was passionately 
fond of her children, and so devoted to her brother Eo- 
bert that -she would have bartered body and soul for him, 
and gone through hell-fire for his sake — who was always 
ready to help a friend when her influence was of value at 
Court — this woman has never been pourtrayed for us, 
unless some approach to her picture under other names 
has been made by the one great master, solely capable, in 
his dramatic works. 

It is difficult, as Fuller has said, to draw those to the 
life who never sit still. The Lady Eich is one of these 
subjects, all sparkle and splendour, and the radiance as of 
rain which continual motion keeps a-twinkle, so various 
in their humours and sudden in their change. In her the 
most perplexing opposites intermixed with a subtle play 



A MINGLED YARN OF GOOD AND EVIL. 415 

and endless shiftings of light and shade, many-coloured 
and evanescent as the breeze-tinted ripples of a summer 
sea. No two portraits of her could possibly be alike. 
In some respects she was one of those generous sinners 
that Christ himself was very kind to, with a heart that 
was bountiful or pitiful and always ready to do a kindly 
action for those who were distressed. For example — 
In March 1596, she writes to Essex : — ' Worthy Brother, I 
was so loth to importune you for this poor gentlewoman, 
as I took this petition from her the last time I was at the 
Court, and yesterday I sent her word by her man that I 
would not trouble you with it, but wished her to make 
some other friends. Upon which message, her husband, 
that hath been subject to franticness through his troubles, 
grew in such despair as his wife's infinite sorrow makes 
me satisfy her again, who thinks that none will pity her 
misery and her children if you do not ; since, if he cannot 
have pardon, he must fly, and leave them in very poor 
estate. Dear brother, let me know your pleasure ; and 
believe that I endlessly remain your most faithful sister, 
Penelope Eich.' And Eowland White gives us a pleasant 
ghmpse of her ladyship in this aspect — 

In March 1597, he had occasion to seek her aid for 
the purpose of getting presented to the Queen a very 
earnest petition of Sir Eobert Sidney's. He says, 4 1 took 
this opportunity to beseech her to do you one favour, 
which was to deliver this letter (and shewed it to her) to 
the Queen ; she kissed it and took it, and told me that 
you had never a friend in Court who would be more ready 
than herself to do you any pleasure ; I besought her, in 
the love I found she bore you, to take some time this night 
to do it ; and, without asking anything at all of the con- 
tents of it, she put it in her bosom and assured me that 
this night, or to-morrow morning, it would be read, and 
bid me attend her.' Which makes us feel a waft of 
cordial warmth breathed from a kindly-affectionecl heart, 
as the letter disappears in its temporary resting-place, 



416 . SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 



THOMAS THORPE 



'ONLIE BEGETTER 5 OF THE SONNETS, 



We are now able to deal with the Inscription written by 
Thomas Thorpe, and bring it within the domain of positive 
facts, instead of leaving its meaning to remain any longer 
a matter of opinion. I am not sure that it is without a 
touch of malicious satisfaction that I place Thorpe after 
the Sonnets for the first time ! Whilst standing full in 
front of them, darkening the doorway, and almost shutting 
Shakspeare out of sight, he has given rne a great deal of 
trouble. And yet, he is not so much to blame for the 
perplexity, as others are. I venture to doubt that the 
Elizabethans, who knew their man, ever mistook his mean- 
ing, or were misled by his ' onlie begetter.'' This was left 
to the discoverers of later times, in which Thorpe's Inscrip- 
tion, rather than Shakspeare's Sonnets, has become the 
main object of critical interest and -ingenuity, and Thorpe's 
shallowness not Shakspeare's depth has received all the 
attention of efforts which have been vain as it would be 
to try and gauge the depths of azure heaven in the reflex 
of a road-side puddle. So completely has this inscription 
on the outside been interposed betwixt us and the Poet's 
own writing, that the only aim of the efforts hitherto 
made to decipher the secret history of the sonnets does 



THORPE'S INSCRIPTION. 417 

but amount to an attempt at discovering a man who 
should be young in years, handsome in person, loose in 
character ; the initials of whose name- must be ' W. H.' 
The discoverers being quite ignorant at the outset of their 
enterprise as to what Thorpe himself knew of the sonnets ; 
what he really meant by his ' onlie begetter,' and liable, 
after all, to be met with the fatal fact that he used the 
word ' begetter ' in its more remote, its original sense, and 
tli us inscribed the sonnets, with his best wishes, to the 
person who might be legitimately called the ' only ob- 
tainer ' of them for him to print. We are now in a position 
to grapple with Thorpe's Inscription — 

TO . THE . ONLIE . BEGETTER . OF . 
THESE . INSVING . SONNETS . 
M r . W . H . ALL . HAPPINESSE . 
AND . THAT . ETERNITIE . 
PROMISED . 
BY . 
OVR . EYER-LIYING . POET . 
WISHETH . 
THE . WELL-WISHING . 
ADYENTYRER . IN . 
SETTING . 
FORTH . T. T. 

A Shakspeare scholar who had read my Article on 
4 Shakspeare and his Sonnets ' in the ' Quarterly Eeview,' 
admitted that he could not answer my arguments, which 
had been urged to show that if the sonnets ever had 
an ' only begetter ' in the creative sense, the Earl of South- 
ampton must have been the man, but he utterly refused, 
he said, to believe that the Earl of Southampton was 
Shakspeare's Master W. EL Thus missing the very obvious 
point, that there is no such person as Shakspeare's ' Mr. 
W. H. !' This mistake has been common with most who 
have touched the subject. If the Poet himself had penned 
the dedication, then no amount of labour could have been 

E E 



418 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

wasted in fathoming its import. The word ' begetter ' 
would then, however, have had but one possible meaning. 
But the Inscription is nttfShakspeare's ; the ' only begetter' 
and the ' Mr. W. H.' are not his ; they are only Thomas 
Thorpe's ! He, the Bookseller, having got the sonnets into 
his hands, wishes 'Mr. W. H.,' whom he calls the ' only 
begetter,' all happiness and that eternity promised by 
Shakspeare in the sonnets. He does not say that the Poet 
promised immortality to Mr. W. H. ; but he, Thomas 
Thorpe, wishes it to him, in setting forth the sonnets. 
From this inscription it has been assumed that Thorpe dedi- 
cated the sonnets to their only objective creator — the man 
who begot them in Shakspeare's mmd, and that this Mas- 
ter W. H. was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Not 
that any worthy attempt has been made to solve a problem 
or grapple with a great difficulty ! Nor has Herbert ever 
been wedded to the sonnets by any identification of facts ; 
no single proof having been produced ! We have had an 
inference drawn from Thorpe's Inscription, not in the least 
a result of reading the Sonnets of Shakspeare ! A closer 
study has led the French Critic, M. Chasles, to per- 
ceive how untenable is the hypothesis that William 
Herbert was the ' only Begetter ' of the sonnets in the 
sense now commonly supposed, and he lias tried to make 
extremes meet by a new reading of Thorpe's dedication, 
earnestly as though there were but one use of the word 
6 begetter J and as though Thorpe must of necessity have 
known all about the sonnets, and the secret relationship 
of the persons concerned ! His new interpretation may 
be given in his own series of conclusions : — ' 1. That we 
have here no dedication, properly so called, at all, but a 
kind of monumental inscription. 2. That this inscription 
has not one continuous sense, but is broken up into two 
distinct sentences. 3. That the former sentence contains 
the real inscription, which is addressed by and not to W. H. 
4. That the person to whom the inscription is addressed 



M. CIIASLES' RENDERING. 419 

is, for some reasons, not directly named, but described by 
what the learn e*tl call an Autonomasia (the only begetter 
of these ensuing sonnets). 5. That the latter sentence is 
only an appendage to the real inscription. 6. That the 
publisher, in the latter sentence, is allowed to express his 
own good wishes, not for an eternity of fame to the beget- 
ter of the sonnets, which would be an impertinence on his 
part, but for the success of the undertaking in which he, 
the adventurer, has embarked his capital.' 

The critic argues that William Herbert is the writer of 
the inscription, and that he dedicates the sonnets to their 
4 only begetter,' the Earl of Southampton. This reading 
looks like a discovery at first sight, but it will not bear a 
second thought. It seeks to surmount one obstacle by 
another still greater. To have to wrench the word 
' wisheth ' from its present place in that wild way is a 
violation of all probability more patent than anything 
hitherto proposed in regard to the dedication. What 
makes M. Chasles' interpretation appear feasible on a first 
glance is that it somewhat illustrates the undeidying facts 
of the case. If any man in this world did set Shakspeare 
writing sonnets, and call forth our Poet's love in that 
form, it certainly must have been the Earl of Southamp- 
ton. But it is difficult to see why it should have been 
assumed that Thorpe knew of an ' only begetter' in the 
creative sense, and who he was, or what would be the ad- 
vantage of proving that the inscription did dedicate to such 
an ' only Begetter' when the sonnets themselves would dis- 
prove it again by telling us in Shakspeare's own words, 
that there was no sole begetter in any such sense ? It is 
only a later endeavour to set Thorpe above Shakspeare. 
The inscription, however, will not bear such a division ; it 
is essentially one. If the Printers had made a mistake and 
run it on, Thorpe was there to correct it. But his own 
phraseology makes that impossible, and carries us over 
any break or division. Mr. Corney thinks it was an over- 

E E 2 



420 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

sight on the part of Thorpe to add his well-wishing Ad- 
venturer so close to the wisheth. This is a strange obser- 
vation to make, and most unfortunate in relation to his 
adopted theory, for it must be obvious to all who consider 
how fond were the Elizabethan sonneteers, Shakspeare 
especially, of the figures Anadiplosis, or the Redouble* and 
Epanelepsis, or the Echo-sound, that Thorpe has been 
trying to imitate the poetic figure, and managed to pro- 
duce a double of his own, an alliteration in sound and sense 
which has in it the very smack of his self-satisfaction, and 
which certainly proves the Inscription to be all one. If 
this had been the solution of the great Shakspeare prob- 
lem our 'homely wits' were not in the least likely to accom- 
plish it, for assuredly no Englishman could have made 
the discovery. 

Not only is M. Chasles' reading impossible in the latter 
part of the Inscription ; it was doomed in the beginning if 
Thorpe meant the only Obtainer of the sonnets for his 
' only Begetter.' 

In dealing with this dedication we must take it as it 
stands, remembering always that it is Thorpe's inscrip- 
tion; not Shakspeare's. And first, what did Thorpe mean 
by his ' onlie begetter of the ensuing sonnets ? ' There 
could have been no ' only begetter,' in the creative sense, 
as is amply proved by the sonnets. There must have 
been more than one person concerned in their begettal 
because the two sexes are directly addressed ; a variety 
of character is implied, and dramatically evolved, and 
where there are two or more Inspirers, there cannot be 
an ' only begetter,' except it were Shakspeare. There being 
no 'only begetter ' in that sense, Mr. W. H. could not 
be rightly addressed, as the sole begetter in such sense. 
Besides, if there had been an ' only begetter,' whom 
Shakspeare loved so much, it is impossible to conceive 
that he could have left the dedication of so much love, 
to the whimsical wording of a bookseller, who had a 
strong spice of buffoonery in his nature ; this being totally 



THE < BEGETTER ' ONLY THE OBTAINER. . 421 

opposed to what be had done in publishing his poems, and 
to the promises he then recorded, and as utterly opposed 
to the spirit of all the personal sonnets. There is no ' only 
begetter,' then inscribed to by Shakspeare himself, and 
the sonnets tell us that no such person begot them, how 
then should Thorpe dedicate to an ' only begetter ? ' 

Some of the earlier commentators, as Chalmers and 
Boswell, have suggested that by his ' only begetter,' Thorpe 
might have meant the 'only obtainer,' the only person who, 
so far as Thorpe was concerned, had power to procure the 
sonnets for him to publish. And this is the original signifi- 
cation of the word. ' Beget,' is derived by Skinner from the 
Anglo-Saxon begettan or begyten- — ' obtinere.' The Glos- 
sary to Thorpe's ' Analecta Anglo-Saxonica ' renders ' be- 
gytan' to beget — obtain. Johnson derives 'beget,' from the 
Anglo-Saxon 'begettan,' to obtain. Webster gives the 
word 'begetter' from 'begetan,'of 'be,' and 'getan' to get. 
An Anglo-Saxon Glossary of Latin words, apparently of the 
ninth century, 1 renders ' Adquiri,' beon be-gyten. In the 
Proverbs of King Alfred, we find the word ' beget,' used 
for obtain. ' Thus quoth Alfred : If thou a friend bi-gete,' 
i. e. if you be-get or get a friend. In Chaucer we have 
'getten,' for obtained with the ' y,' as prefix ' y-getten.' 
Thus the original sense of the word beget was possessive, 
not creative ! I believe the word to be used with this 
primary meaning in ' Titus Andronicus,' ' Till time beget 
some easeful remedy.' It certainly is so used by Dekkar 
in his ' Satiromastix' which was printed seven years 
before the sonnets. He writes — ' I have some cousin- 
germans at court shall beget you (that is, obtain for 
you) the reversion of the Master of the King's Eevels.' 
In this sense the ' begetter,' is merely the person who 
gets, or obtains a thing. We have divided the word 
and doubled the use of it, but Dekkar employs it in 
the simple Anglo-Saxon sense. And this is the sense in 

1 See Reliquce Antiquce, vol. i. p. 11. 



422 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

which Thorpe inscribed Shakspeare'' s sonnets to the ' only 
begetter.' Such at least, is my interpretation ; and ifc is 
demanded by all the necessities, illustrated by all the cir- 
cumstances, enforced by all the facts of the case. In 
Minsheu's Dictionary (1617), the verb to beget is given 
to bring forth. So that Thorpe in dedicating to the 
' begetter,' for the ' obtainer,' had really a double choice 
of meanings when he inscribed to the only 4 obtainer', 
or ' bringer-forth.' My reading will show that there 
was no only begetter in any other sense. And, if there 
had been, we may rest assured that Mr. Thorpe would 
not have been delegated to explain a mystery which 
Shakspeare had not thought fit to make clear ; he would 
not be empowered to address the very person whom 
the Poet has left nameless, with regard to the sonnets. 
Besides which, if Shakspeare had purposed naming his 
begetter of the sonnets, and intended to dedicate the 
individual affection, and the promised immortality to 
his friend, this was the vaguest way of conferring name 
and fame ever yet adopted, for there is no name and con- 
sequently there could follow no fame. Thorpe was not 
in the least concerned with the person or persons who 
' begot ' the sonnets, only in the person who 'got,' obtained 
them for him to print, and it is not in the remotest degree 
likely that he was made a party to the mystery in any shape. 
What the three friends did not choose to reveal, they 
could not permit a bookseller to know, much less to pub- 
lish abroad. It is the begetter for him that he addresses 
with compliments, not the begetter from Shakspeare. 
The begetter of the sonnets ; not their begetter. This 
4 only begetter,' therefore, is Thorpe's not Shakspeare's. 
And as Thorpe was only too glad to obtain the sonnets 
for printing, he would be too fearful of offence to commit 
himself rashly by any unadvised dedication. Not being 
commissioned to speak for others, he would be discreet 
enough to speak only for himself. 



THORPE'S AFFECTATION. 423 

Iii a matter so delicate lie would put forth nothing 
without some warrant for its appropriateness and accept- 
ance ; his setting-forth would be done on a safe footing ; 
and 'Mr. W. H.' knew right well that he was not the ' only 
begetter,' save in the sense of ' obtainer.' Therefore we 
may infer that the same power which suppressed the full 
title of ' Mr. W. H' woidd be exerted to prevent any such 
mistake on the part of Thorpe, whose words would be 
thus rendered reliable and trustworthy for us. 

Thorpe had undoubtedly peeped at his treasure when 
the sonnets came into his possession, and he knew there 
was a promise of immortality often repeated in them, but 
he did not know to whom ! He could not know the 
hidden history, or life-relationships that my reading 
unfolds. He only approached the sonnets on the book- 
seller's side. He could only dedicate them to the person 
who obtained them for printing ; could only thank the 
getter of them. 

But there is no need to take advantage of my reading, 
and prove the inscription by the sonnets. The Inscription 
alone may be made to supply adequate demonstration that 
Thorpe inscribed to the ' only obtained when he dedicated 
to the ' only begetter.' And first of its writer : Thorpe 
published Lucan's first book, which was translated by Mar- 
lowe. In doing so, he dedicated the work ' To his kind 
and true friend, Edward Blunt,' in the following conceited 
and fantastical fashion. 

4 Blount : I purpose to be blunt with you, and out of my 
dulness to encounter you with a Dedication in the memory 
of that pure element all wit Clir. Marlow ; whose ghost or 
Genius is to be seen walk the Churchyard in (at least) three 
or four sheets. Methinks you should presently look wild now, 
and grow humourously frantic upon the taste of it. Well, 
lest you should, let me tell you : This spirit was some- 
time a familiar of your own, Lucan's first Book translated : 
which (in regard of your old rights in it) I have raised 
in the circle of your patronage. But stay now Edward (if I 



424 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

mistake not) you are to accomodate yourself with some few 
instructions, touching the property of a Patron, that you are 
not yet possest of; and to study them for your better grace as 
our Gallants do fashions. First you must be proud and think 
you have merit enough in you, tho' you are nere so empty, 
then when I bring you the book take physic and keep state, 
assign me a time by your man to come again, and, afore the 
day, be sure to have changed your lodging ; in the meantime 
sleep little, and sweat with the invention of some pitiful dry 
jest or two which you may happen to utter, with some little 
(or not at all) marking of your friends when you have found 
a place for them to come in at : or if by chance something has 
dropt from you worth the taking up weary all that come to 
you with the often repetition of it : censure scornfully enough, 
and somewhat like a travailer ; commend nothing lest you dis- 
credit your (that which you would seem to have) judgement. 
These things if you can mould yourself to them, NTed, I make 
no question but they will not become you. One special virtue 
in your patrons of these days I have promised myself you shall 
fit excellently, which is to give nothing. Yes, thy love I will 
challenge as my peculiar object both in this, and (I hope) 
many more succeeding offices : Farewell, I affect not the world 
should measure my thoughts to thee by a scale of this nature ; 
leave to think good of me when I fall from thee. 
6 Thine in all rights 

6 of perfect friendship, 

6 Thom. Thokpe.' 

This will afford us a crucial test of the literary taste of 
the man Thorpe, and we may gather from it the sense in 
which he would use the word ' begetter.' He affected a 
rather Pistol-like phraseology, and loved to catch an ' ink- 
horn term by the tail.' To be quaint in his meaning and 
far-fetched in his words was the ' humour of it' with him ; 
he sought to be uncommon with a learned look. His ; wish- 
eth the well-wishing' shows that he affected the phrase, 
the learned style, consequently, he would be quite certain to 
use the word ' begetter' in its remoter sense ; that which 
lay nearest to its Saxon derivation, and was then passing 



THE ONLY ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR PUBLISHING. 425 

into obsoleteness. Now, all the quaintness, all the af- 
fectedness, all the remoteness, all that was most uncom- 
mon and therefore characteristic of Thorpe, lies in the use 
of the word 'begetter' for ' obtainer,' and that was why 
he chose it to express his meaning. He used the prefix 
'be' to ' getter' just as Spenser affected the 'y' in such 
words as 'yclad' or ' ycleped' — to give an antique touch. 
Also, the word only is to me as determinate of his 
meaning as the word 'begetter.' It must be plainly 
apparent that the emphasis on this ' only ' is most incom- 
patible with the tone of the latter portion of the inscrip- 
tion, if we suppose Thorpe to have used the ' begetter' in 
the creative sense. To the only begetter he says, with all 
the authority in the world ! Yet, later on, he does not 
know who it was to whom Shakspeare had promised 
immortality. If he were sure of the only one he would 
not have . been thus weak and wavering. He would not 
have skilled the edge of the subject if he had struck to 
the heart of the matter in his ' only begetter.' Had Mr. 
W. H. been the '' only begetter' as the objective creator 
of the sonnets, and Thorpe had known this, and said it, 
and used the word only with such certitude, then it was 
the idlest impertinence for him to have weakly wished 
Mr. W. H. that ' eternity promised by our everliving 
Poet.' Had he been in possession of the fact supposed, 
he would have followed up the bold note of his ' only 
begetter' with words more definite and sure. He would 
have said to whom the immortality had been promised, 
and congratulated the person addressed, if he had known, 
as he must have known if he inscribed to the ' only be- 
getter' of the sonnets in Shakspeare's mind; the sole 
object of Shakspeare's love. But whatever else may be 
obscure, it is luminously self-evident that Thorpe does not 
say, and did not know to whom the immortality was 
promised. He does not know, does not pretend to know, 
he only alludes to a known fact in a general way, and 



426 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

this after being so pointed and particular in his c only 
begetter.' He cannot speak for Shakspeare here ; only 
for himself ; if he could, he certainly would have said the 
most because he is anxious to say the most in a compli- 
mentary strain. And, as he does not speak for Shak- 
speare in the latter words of the dedication, but only for 
himself, he cannot speak for Shakspeare when using the 
6 only begetter,' consequently, the ' only begetter' must 
be Thorpe's — that is the person who w r as really the ' only 
obtainer' of the sonnets for printing — and he can address 
him with confidence as such whilst compelled to wish and 
hint so vaguely in regard to the immortality. 

This weight of emphasis on the word ' only' not only 
serves to turn the scale in favour of the ' obtainer' for 
the ' begetter,' but it has another signification. It has the 
look of Thorpe taking position behind what he considers 
a safe defence, as though the matter stood thus in his 
mind — ' I, Thomas Thorpe, am pushing a transaction that 
has an equivocal look. Shakspeare is not publishing his 
own sonnets, and I have no direct warrant from him to 
publish them, some of which are rather queer in texture. 
But I did not steal them. I have ample w r arrant for 
their appearance. I inscribe them to the only person who 
had sufficient power to authorise their going to press, and 
who is responsible for their appearance. Mr. W. H. is 
well known to Shakspeare, and he can bear all blame 
should any offence be taken, and effectually shield me. 
My inscription shall serve to saddle the right horse.' 
There is still another stress of which the words are sus- 
ceptible ; one peculiarly appropriate to the circumstances. 
The sonnets must have been a publisher's prize and much 
sought after. In dedicating to the only person who had 
power to obtain them, Mr. Thorpe was proud to call 
attention to the fact that he w^as the only receiver, the 
only publisher fortunate enough to secure the coveted 
sonnets. 



SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 427 

Thus he inscribed them to ' Mr. W. H.' as the only 
getter, or, as he chose affectedly to say, 'only ^-getter' 
of them for publishing purposes. In doing this he tries 
to add something complimentary, and likes to show that 
he has read the sonnets, so he wishes ' Mr. W. H.' all 
happiness and eternal life, connecting the latter idea with 
Shakspeare's promises of immortality. 

Allowing for Mr. Thorpe's touch of affectation in the use 
of the word ' begetter,' it is all perfectly natural, and the 
inscription no longer deepens the mystery of the sonnets. 
We can now afford to be honest and confess that it was 
our suspicion that Shakspeare had something to conceal 
which gave the shadowy terror to, and made a bugbear of 
Thomas Thorpe's curious inscription ! 

These are my conclusions on the whole matter. There 
are properly but two series of the sonnets. The first was 
written for the Earl of Southampton ; the latter for Wil- 
liam Herbert. Shakspeare was sought out by the young 
Earl of Southampton about the year 1591 — unexpectedly 
by the Poet, as is intimated in sonnet 25, (p. 118). The 
acquaintanceship soon ripened into personal friendship. 
The youth was generous and loveable, but apt to squander 
the treasures of his dawning manhood. Shakspeare began 
to write the sonnets by advising his young friend to get 
married ; thus, from the first, his object was his friend, not 
himself; the sonnets were not intended to be autobiogra- 
phic. When the Earl met with the ' faire Mistress Vernon ' 
and fell in love with her, Eomeo-like, at first sight, a 
change of subject and treatment was suggested by the 
Earl himself, as is indicated in sonnet 38, (p. 157) ; and 
the Poet commenced writing dramatically on his friend's 
new affection, in Southampton's own book. He went 
deeper and deeper into his subject, sometimes treating 
it playfully, sometimes in sad earnest, as the feelings 
were more intensified by time and trial. This continued, 
in the various ways illustrated by my reading, up to the 



428 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

year 1603, when the Earl of Southampton was released 
from prison, the dramatic sonnets being interspersed with 
personal ones written from time to time ; although the 
sonnets had nearly ceased when the Earl was married to 
Elizabeth Yernon in 1598. His purpose in beginning the 
sonnets was to induce his friend to marry, and when the 
Earl has fallen in love with Elizabeth Yernon, he devotes 
them chiefly to the practical purpose of carrying on the 
courtship, and they nearly end with the marriage. 

In the spring of 1598 William Lord Herbert came to 
live in London, and formed a personal friendship with 
Shakspeare. Southampton was away from England almost 
the whole of this year, and Herbert possibly drew nigher 
to the Poet on that account. He succeeded in getting 
Shakspeare to write some sonnets for him, and by doing so 
became the cause of all the mystery. 

Shakspeare most certainly never wrote the Southampton 
Sonnets with any intention of their coming before the 
public by such a bye- way under his own name. When 
he began to write the sonnets it was with no thought of 
their being printed. In sonnet 17 he looks forward to 
their remaining in MS., and the paper on which he writes 
growing yellow with age. JSTor is it easy to see how he 
could have published the sonnets as his own, or have been 
connected with the selhng of them, as they were at first so 
sacred a memorial of private friendship that the Poet must 
have felt it a sort of sacrilege to take them to market. 
In this respect his intention is proclaimed in sonnets 21 , 
(p. 132), and 102, (p. 253), where he tells us that he pur- 
posed not to sell, and ' that love is merchandised whose 
rich esteeming the owner's tongue doth publish every- 
where.' Still, he may at one time have meant to print 
them without his name in the manner previously suggested ; 
and his intentions have been frustrated by an act of the 
Earl, such as giving away the copy of his sonnets to Her- 
bert, who thus stepped into possession, and the matter was 



TPIE HEART OF THE MYSTERY. 429 

thereby taken out of Shakspeare's hands. As my reading 
shows, neither of these two friends had aught to conceal ; 
there is nothing in the nature of the Southampton Sonnets 
to cause the mysterious publication of them. 

The Earl's love and fortunes had prospered. The Queen 
was dead, and all her tempers over. Clearly there were 
no reasons here for any further concealment had Shak- 
speare chosen to fulfil his own promises in his own way, 
and dedicate the Southampton Sonnets to their ' begetter.' 
We must look to the Herbert Series for an explanation. 
Here we discover something to conceal ; and, in his infa- 
tuation for a woman of loose character, not in Shakspeare's 
moral delinquencies shall we find the predominate reason 
why the sonnets were ushered into the world in such a 
second-hand manner. It suited Herbert — -and even he could 
have entertained no thought of printing the latter sonnets 
so long as Lady Eich was alive — that if the sonnets were 
printed they should go forth veiled in their own mystery, 
and not tell the various love-stories publicly which they 
had told privately to the initiated friends. He would be 
pleased to have his sonnets included with the rest of Shak- 
speare's, and desirous that they should go forth without 
explanation of facts or identification of persons. Shakspeare, 
I imagine, must have felt some dislike of the Herbert 
Series being included, for he could not but have seen that, 
however read, they did not reflect any credit on himself. 
Not that he supposed they would ever be interpreted as 
personal confessions, so thoroughly would the bonnets 
among his private friends ' be understood to mean sonnets 
written for his private friends, but although he was so 
indifferent to fame he could not have been indifferent to 
the fate of his sonnets which were so expressive of his 
love for Southampton. Still, if Herbert obtained that Earl's 
consent for the whole of them to go forth together, just 
as sonnets, there remained nothing for Shakspeare to do but 
to give his consent also. If Southampton did not object, 



430 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

did not seek to have his sonnets kept apart from others, 
Shakspeare would naturally feel it was not for him to resist 
on his own behalf, if he had been so inclined. I do not 
argue, however, that the sonnets were put forth by Thomas 
Thorpe instead of Shakspeare because there was' need of 
any kind of concealment. There was no necessity of con- 
cealing that which readers were not in the least likely to 
discover. After all, the sonnets were composed for pri- 
vate purposes — the work of ' idle hours ' — and were a 
sort of private property. Shakspeare had given them 
away to the private friends, who were in a position to do 
as they pleased with their own. This idea of concealment 
has resulted from the subject of some of the sonnets being 
coupled with Thorpe's seemingly singular inscription. The 
friends were not putting on the mask against detection in 
permitting a dedication of any kind to one of themselves ! 
It was never contemplated that the sonnets would re-tell 
their own secret histories ; therefore such a possibility was 
not sought to be provided against, by what would have been 
a most shallow device. I look upon the affair as a private 
confidence with which Thorpe had nothing whatever to 
do, and it has been a stupid mistake to expect the Book- 
seller to explain that which the Poet and his friends never 
thought of explaining, never meant to be explained, 
never dreamed that the world would not rest on the 
subject until their secret should be explained. Herbert, 
having a personal interest then in the sonnets, and 
influence with the writer of them, would obtain from 
Shakspeare — before he left London for Stratford — some 
such permission as that they might be printed at a future 
day if in a form Southampton would not object to. 
And the Poet, after giving up all his ' pretty ones,' proba- 
bly gave a promise that the whole should be left a mys- 
tery as to their precise nature. So Shakspeare, in his 
easy way, let the matter slide, and Herbert acquired the 
right to give away the sonnets. Thorpe, then, dedicated 



THE RIDDLE READ. 431 

them to the only Obtainer, and the inscription was left to 
him with the injunction that the present title of Pembroke 
should be suppressed and initials alone be used. In ac- 
cordance with which hint, and to follow suit, Mr. Thorpe 
as setter forth, and contrary to his usual custom, only 
prints his own Initials. And thus was Shakspeare's in- 
tended but unfinished Monument to Southampton crowned 
and completed with the head and inscrutable face of a 
Sphinx, upon which, to perfect the riddle, Thorpe inscribed 
his hieroglyphics. It suited the publisher's purpose and 
was consonant with his character to make the thing look 
as mysterious as possible, to provoke curiosity and in- 
crease his importance. The transaction was most likely 
effected by an intermediate person, who was also anxious 
for the sonnets to be secured in print. I do not think 
Herbert had any direct dealings with the printers. The 
arrangement would have been somewhat more perfect, 
and the press better corrected if anyone so intimately ac- 
quainted with their secret history had read the proofs of 
the sonnets. Luckily, certain batches of the sonnets must 
have been so written, or fastened together, as to cohere in 
spite of the printers' or other handling, and the Herbert 
Series did secure some sort of marking-off into its distinct 
position. 

My greatest difficulty has been with the many loose 
single sonnets which had got out of position and mixed 
the various strata of the whole book in a most perplexing 
manner. It has been my endeavour to restore each to its 
own place according to its kind and the law of formation. 
Finally, I conclude that no one but the person for whom 
the latter sonnets were written would or could have given 
the whole of them to the press ; that they are not personal 
to the Poet whose wise reticence and shrinking from giving 
publicity to personal affairs — one of the most marked 
characteristics of our race — must have been a ruling power 
of his English nature ; that the sonnets were inscribed by 



432 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Thorpe to their ' only begetter' as the only obtainer ; that 
they had no only begetter in any other sense ; that this 
only obtainer was William Herbert, who obtained the 
Southampton Sonnets together with such other odds and 
ends of Shakspeare's poetry as the Poet had given to 
him ; that he added to these the sonnets which had been 
written for himself at his own suggestion ; he giving the 
subject and having a hand in their composition; that his 
own series was written for him in the years 1599 and 
1600 — when the Southampton Sonnets ceased for a time — 
before Herbert became Earl of Pembroke — which is implied 
in the permitted inscription to ' Mr. W. H. ; ' that he ob- 
tained a general permission from Shakspeare respecting 
their being given to the press on account of his personal 
interest in the sonnets, in consequence of which interest he 
collected the sonnets, and thus they were inscribed to 
him so curiously by Thomas Thorpe ! 

I also conclude that Herbert took advantage of the 
Poet's general permission, and that he alone is re- 
sponsible for bringing up the rear of the sonnets with 
the Black-Guard. In my own mind I am perfectly sure 
that there are some sonnets included which Shak- 
speare never meant to be printed, even if he ever saw 
them all. I can imagine him writing most of these for 
a purpose, but that purpose was altogether private, and 
fully served when the sonnets were sent to the person 
addressed, especially if they were sent as Herbert's. And 
I cannot imagine Shakspeare giving his consent for the 
sonnets to appear exactly as they come to us. There are 
some here, I think, that made the Poet look amazed when 
he saw the printed copy. It is certain he never had proof- 
sheets for correction, and the fact has to be accounted for! 
If it had been all square and above-board, as we say, why 
should not Herbert or Thorpe have secured the Author's 
finishing touch ? 

It is to me a matter of moral certainty that Shakspeare 



ADDITIONS MADE BY HERBERT. 433 

did not write the 151st sonnet, which is irrecognisable as 
his by any light flashed from his spirit, or reflected in 
his works ; it has no likeness to the other sonnets ; it 
is opposed by sonnet 141 — utterly diverse in spirit and 
tendency ; quite incompatible with his treatment whether 
smiling or serious, and absolutely repudiated by the 
rebuking gravity and solemn significance of the two 
last sonnets. 1 Thus, for the various reasons assigned, I 
hold that at least four of these pieces were written by Wil- 
liam Herbert. What warrant he may have had for printing 
lines of his own I cannot judge; there is no evidence. 2 
But I do feel satisfied that there are pieces to the publica- 
tion of which Shakspeare never gave his sanction. I have 
shown that these things were not written upon a passion 
of his own, and I hold him to have been as incapable of 
giving his leave for the whole of them to become public 
property, more especially when they had been written for a 
private purpose — at the suggestion of another. He could 

1 Since writing the foregoing, I find by the l Gern Edition ' that an Editor 
of delicate taste has singled out this sonnet, to reject it from the Herbert 
series. The instinct may be safely trusted a little farther. 

Mr. Palgrave accepts the Personal Theory, and, on his own admis- 
sion, can make but little of it. Although each sonnet ' is an Autobiographic 
Confession,'' he remarks, we are completely foiled in getting at Shakspeare 
himself, and these 'revelations of the Poet's innermost nature ' appear to 
1 teach us less of the man ' than the tone of mind which we trace or seem to 
trace in his Dramas. The ( strange imagery of passion which passes over the 
magic mirror has no tangible existence before or behind it. 1 And yet these son- 
nets are, every one of them, ' Autobiographic J '' It is Shakspeare showing 
himself to us, not only in person, for he has revealed to us, so they keep say- 
ing, the ' depths of his heart, in a drama more tragic than the madness of 
Lear, or the agonies of Othello? Would it not be wiser and more prudent to 
suspect such a Theory, than to suppose that Shakspeare, the great master of 
expression, the man whose art of saying just what he meant is incomparable, 
supremely potent, and of infinite felicity, should have written an Autobio- 
graphy that is Impersonal — a Subjective Revelation which reveals nothing ? 
The thing is a barefaced impossibility ! You cannot cross the sea by land. 

2 In sonnet 77 (p. 241), Shakspeare most assuredly offers the pen to 
Southampton, and asks him to fill some of the vacant leaves of the book in 
which he is then writing one of the sonnets. 

F F 



434 SITAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

not have permitted all of these latter sonnets to accompany 
the Southampton ones and thus defile the sanctities of 
love and friendship. ' Is it not most damnable in us,' 
says one of his characters, ' to be trumpeters of our 
unlawful intents ? ' And is it to be credited that he 
would not feel and act up to the level of that thought in 
such a matter of personal import as this ? he who must 
have had the supremest sense of fair fame and unstained 
reputation, a perfect loathing of that which should bear a 
6 hateful memory upon record/ ' The purest treasure 
mortal times afford is spotless reputation,' says Mowbray. 
'Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the im- 
mediate jewel of their souls,' says Iago. Prince Harry 
prays over his slain enemy Hotspur, that his praise may 
ascend to heaven, his ignominy sleep in the grave, and not 
be remembered in his Epitaph. ' I have offended repu- 
tation,' exclaims Antony, ' a most unnoble swerving.' 
The thought of his lost reputation sobers Cassio on the 
instant, and the remembrance of his infamy gives the 
death- sting to Enobarbus. ' But, if it be a sin to covet 
Honour, I am the most offending soul alive ! ' cries his 
darling hero, Harry V. 

A most sensitive feeling of honour is associated with 
all his nearest touches of nature,— his greatest moments 
of action — his proudest thoughts of life — his deepest 
apprehensions of death, — and I will not believe that in 
this regard he was careless for himself alone in a work 
which was to be published with his name. It is not 
possible to think that a man who cared so little about 
gathering up his best works could have been party to 
the careful treasuring up of his worst ! With Herbert 
the sonnets were left : from Herbert they were obtained 
by Thorpe, and to Herbert belongs the responsibility of 
printing all that we find under the title of Shakspeare's 
Sonnets, and the onus of their being inscribed to himself 
as ' Mr. W. H.' This is to all intents and purposes ac- 



THE ONUS OF PRINTING RESTS WITH HERBERT. 435 

knowledged, and even pointed out by Thorpe. If the Poet 
expressed any wishes on the subject they were not impli- 
citly obeyed ; more was included as ' Shahspeare's Sonnets ' 
than had been authorised. This is shown in an artistic 
point of view by the insertion of three pieces which are not 
' sonnets,' and two fragments on a subject that has nothing 
to do with the work. And in the moral aspect it is as- 
suredly the most just to conclude that a want of discretion 
was far more in keeping with the character of Herbert 
than with that of a man who was so full of self-respect, 
domestic prudence, practical sagacity, wise reserve, and 
canny discreetness as was our Shakspeare ; he who had 
passed his London-life without blemish of his honour, stain 
on his reputation, or suspicion of his morality, and who, 
when the sonnets were printed, had more incentives than 
ever for observing the decencies of life, and the respecta- 
bilities of personal character. 



F F 2 



436 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



OF THE NEW BEADING 

AND 

ARRANGEMENT. 



The reading of Shakspeare's Sonnets now presented af- 
fords the only theory yet adventured that is not full of 
perplexity and bewilderment. It is the only one that 
surmounts the obstacles, disentangles the complications, 
resolves the discords, and out of various voices draws the 
one harmony. It ignores no difficulty, violates no fact, 
strains no point for the sake of making extremes meet ; it 
gathers up every possibility, and is consistent from begin- 
ning to end. We cannot but feel a degree of certitude that 
the central magnet of the meaning must be grasped when 
all things surrounding thus fall into place, and obey their 
compelling law of gravitation ; cannot but think we have 
reached the heart of the Maze when standing where so 
many probabilities converge, and we see, as in a map, the 
beginning of each ; the blending of all. 

The personal interpretation is a real rendering of dark- 
ness visible. The story breaks off suddenly after the first 
twenty-six sonnets : it will not run or unravel autobiogra- 
phically. To borrow an illustration from the silkwinders, 
it takes a world of trouble to find the 'end' each time 
there is a snap ; and, when found, it is continually a start 
and then a stand-still. 

It is utter folly to talk of a self-revelation made by 
Shakspeare so inward that we cannot reach it. There are 



CURRENT THEORIES. 437 

fifty 1 plain facts to be met — facts of outer life, of character, 
of sex, — on the surface of the sonnets, all opposed to the 
Autobiographic view, before anyone need have dived into 
the deeps of their own subjectivity for the supposed 
dreadful secrets of the Poet's heart. Nor will the theory 
work which holds that the sonnets are mere fantastic ex- 
ercises of ingenuity, having no root in reality — no relation 
to Shakspeare's own life. They are intensely real from 
first to last through a wide range of varying feelings, 
whatsoever their meaning. Although they were published 
as sonnets, and the stories they once told have passed out 
of sight when the Poet withdrew into his cloud, they 
refuse to be read singly, even if we give separate titles to 
every one. The life cannot be pulverised out of them by 
any such process. The story will not come to a full stop 
at the sonnet's end. It will continue its course out of 
sight, lurking underground, like the river Mole, where it 
cannot run visibly on the surface, and reappear a little 
farther on. Those who take so shallow a view must, of 
necessity, be exceedingly dull readers of poetry, or very 

1 ' Fifty ? ' In one sonnet alone, the 124th, there are at least a dozen :— 

1. The speaker's affection has been the ' Child of State.' 

2. It is no longer the ' Child of State.' 

3. Had it continued to be merely so it would now have likewise become 
the l unfathered bastard ' of Fortune ! 

4. It no more suffers in the ' smiling pomp ' of a Court. 

5. It has heretofore so suffered. 

6. The speaker is hindered by what has occurred from joining the young 
men of his own rank (' ouk Fashion ') who are going to help put down 
Rebellion, or facing the threatened blow of ' thralled Discontent.' 

7. Such speaker must be a possible servant of the State ; obviously a 
Soldier. 

8. He fears not e Policy ' the heretic ! which has worked against him. 

9. His affection now stands all alone in its own policy of independence. 

10. Something has occurred which dignifies the speaker with danger, and 
makes fresh appeal to his steadfastness. 

11. He rejoices in having beforehand broken the power of accident by 
making his ' love ' secure, come what might. 

12. To the truth of his assertions he calls as present witnesses the spirits 
of those that suffered an ignominious death in connexion with affairs of State. 



438 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

often startled by the strange passion in the expression, the 
unaccountable force of the pleadings, the depths of feeling 
sounded which make the sonnets perplexing as a dance of 
many figures to a spectator who is so deaf that he does not 
hear the music to which the motions are timed. Keats 
found the sonnets to be full of fine things said uninten- 
tionally, in the intensity of working out conceits. 1 It 
must be felt that the writer has a singular way of saying 
nothing. Of the two readings this is the shallowest. 
Shakspeare could write nonsense ; no man better ; but it 
was the rich overflow of an irrepressible humour, never 
the sheddings of a maudlin sentimentality. He never 
wept on the tearful pretence of a sham sorrow. He was 
not the man to ' discourse fustian with his own shadow.' 
The other theory does rest on some natural ground — a 
belief in his earnestness when he was writing — this theory 
is absolutely baseless. It is likewise in direct contradiction 
to his own assertion, for he tells us, with all emphasis, that 
it is not with him as with ' that Muse — stirred by a 
painted beauty to his verse.' Not a creation of fancy, but 
creatures of flesh and blood are his objects ; his reliance 
is on truth and reality ; he is no mere fancy-monger or ven- 
der of similes ! But the crowning absurdity that tops 
extremity is the third theory, which holds the sonnets to be 
symbolic; 2 a mere bubble-world of transcendentalism, in 
which the most richly objective of poets is the most 
mystically subjective. 

1 Life, vol. i. p. 70. 

2 When writing of the German-subjective-transcendental-symbolic view 
of the sonnets in the first chapter of this work, I did not know that it had 
been out-Herauded in our country by a writer in 'Temple Bar.' (See No. 17 
for ' A new View of Shakspeare 's sonnets.''} Had this been written as a bur- 
lesque on the German book, it would have made an excellent jest. But Mr. He- 
raud is as absurdly serious as his cousin-German. ' After a careful reperusal 
(he remarks), I have come to the conclusion that there is not a single sonnet which 
is addressed to any individual at aU. i He maintains that the ' Two Loves ' 
of sonnet 144 are ' the Celibate Church on the one hand, and the Reformed 
Church on the other!' 1 And in the latter sonnets ; our poet is reading his 



ONLY THEORY BY WHICH THEY CAN BE READ. 430 

The present theory, which is really an appeal to common 
sense on behalf of the most practical of men and poets, 
alone enables us to see how it is that Shakspeare can be at 
the same time the Friend who loves and is blessed, and the 
Lover who doats and is disconsolate ; how the great calm 
man of the sweetest blood, the smoothest temper, and most 
cheery soul can be the anxious, jealous, fretful wooer who 
has been pursued by the ' slings and arrows of outrageous 
Fortune,' and driven from his heart's home to drift about 
the world as a wanderer, who, in his weakness, has said 
and done things for which he prays forgiveness, and which 
in him are not hard to forgive, because he is a lover who 
has been much tried, and amidst all the shiftings of life 
and slidings of fortune has been true at heart and stead- 
fast in his love. Here we can see how the Poet has been 
the Player still, in his ' idle hours,' and how he can person- 
ate a passion to the life, and disguise his face past our recog- 
nition, and change the dramatic mask at will for the amuse- 
ment of his 'private friends : ' at one moment rendering 
the pretty petulance and tender reproaches of a jealous 
lady who grows desperate because she does not know the 
worst, but is fully inclined to think it ; at another breathing 
all his heart into the protestations of a ranging lover who 
has been here and there, and whose love has appeared to 
be the slave of Time and the sport of wind and wave, and 

Bible — ' Has the very Book open before him ,' Mr. Herand says, 'lie is in 
fact reading the Canticles ; and there lie finds the Bride, who is lt black but 
comely " — at once the bride of his Celestial Friend and his own ' ! ! ! Oh, my 
Lady Rich how art thou translated ! I think this too good to omit, although 
I can only make a- note of it ; good enough surely, if boundless folly can 
reach so far, to tickle Shakspeare in eternity and make him feel a carnal 
gush of the old human jollity ! Verily, he might say of his expounders, as 
Sterne said of the asses in his ' Sentimental Journey,' ' How they viewed 

AND REVIEWED US ! ' 

•But why recognise such rootless and literally groundless imaginings as 
these ? Wherefore notice such vain shadows at all in the presence of reali- 
ties firm and fast as the centre ? What says Deilus in Randolph's ' Muses' 
Looking-Glass ' when he has been censured for his fear of Shadows ? Who 
knows but they come leering after us to steal away the substance ! " 



440 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

yet no distance could sever it from its true resting-place. 
Then he can lay aside the mask and show his own face 
calm and noble, and wearing a look of smiling cheer for 
his friend ; or, if there be a shadow on it, this does not 
darken from within — comes from no selfish pang — no 
personal compunction of conscience — it only reflects that 
cloud which is passing over the fortunes of his ' dear Boy? 
Thus we may understand how he can be modest for him- 
self and shrinking out of all notice, yet grow defiant and 
dazzling as a ' mailed angel on a battle-day ' when he is 
fighting for this friend, and the sword glitters, the shield 
glows, the valour mounts, and the trumpet rings. These 
sounding promises and lofty boasts of immortality are only 
the echoes and reverberations in the upper air of the 
battle with Time and Fortune, and ' all-oblivious Enmity ' 
which is going on below. Thus we may comprehend how 
Shakspeare can rejoice in this friend who is all the world 
to him, when his own life-battle may have been going hard 
against him, and, directly after, depict the feeling of for- 
lorn friendlessness of that friend who is 'in disgrace with 
Fortune and Men's eyes,' and who looks on himself as an 
outcast, and wishes he were as those who have friends and 
sit within the warm and rosy inner circle of happiness ; 
how the spirit, that in motion was at rest, can appear full 
of all unrest and disquietude ; how the love that is such a 
still blessedness to the one can be to the other like the 
fabled thorn in the heart of the Nightingale which she 
presses and sings ' sweet ! sweet ! sweet ! ' bleeding all the 
while she turns her sorrow into song ; how one sonnet 
can tell of the speaker's ' well-contented day,' and show that 
meek spirit of content which really and rightly inherits 
the earth, and has the richest of all possessions in its 
own self-possession, whilst its neighbouring plaint em- 
bodies a spirit that is perturbed and full of discontent ; 
changeful as a day in April. How he can deal playfully 
on one side of the same theme, and be deeply, painfully in 



THE DUALITY. 441 

earnest on the other. Thus, on the subject of parting he 
can himself afford to seek a somewhat fantastic and son- 
neteering kind of excuse — ' Even for this — that is, for me 
to ivrite about you — let us separate (39), and render that 
friend's parting from his mistress (to go abroad) with a 
most dramatic fire and smoke of torment. He can assert 
his own steadfastness of unwavering affection, and with an 
almost monotonous iteration protest its unchangeableness 
now and for ever, whilst, at the same time, he continues the 
story : the quarrels, the flirtations, partings and greetings of 
a pair of lovers the course of whose love did not run smooth, 
but was full of ups and downs, tests and trials, leavetakings 
and makings-up. And when he has done ample justice 
poetically to the character of the Earl, and c confessed ' him 
with all his unfolded faults and penitent tears, he can, in 
his own person, give him absolution and, with the lustiest 
sense of his own liberty to do so, celebrate that ' marriage 
of true minds ' in sonnet 116 — assert emphatically the 
truth of the whole matter, and challenge all the world with 
the airiest, cheeriest defiance to prove any error on him. 
He writes playful, punning sonnets for William Herbert, 
and some that paint the youngster's passion in fiery hues, 
but showing that he presides over his own work ; gives 
his own summing up and last word, we hear his real self, 
speaking out finally in characterization of the subject, with 
a judicial solemnity of tone which goes farthest, sinks 
deepest, and tells us plainly enough when his own spirit 
touches us to call our attention so that we m(ay look and 
see his own thought and understand his words. All 
the secret lies in the simple fact that the ' sweet swan 
of Avon,' like Wordsworth's swan upon St. Mary's Lake — ■ 

' Floats double, swan and shadow.' 

No other theory can pretend to reconcile the conflicting 
differences and prickly points of opposition with which 
the sonnets have so bristled all over that many persons, 



442 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

seeing the host of difficulties, have shut their eyes and 
closed the book. This, alone, takes the sonnets almost as 
they stand ; tells their various stories, identifies the differ- 
ent characters ; matches these with their expression ; 
calls them by name and they answer, proves many of 
the inner facts by events, and dates, and illustrations 
from the outer life of the persons and the historic sur- 
roundings of the period. It shows that many of these 
sonnets are shaped by the spirit of the age ; how they wear 
its ' form and pressure,' and have its circumstances figured 
in their imagery. It tells us how the things here written 
were once lived by Shakspeare and his friends. It shows 
us the concealed half of the Man ; the other side of the 
luminary, and does more than anything hitherto accom- 
plished to connect him with the life of his time ; makes him 
touch earth again ; brings him back to us in his habit and 
affection as he lived. It is the most authentic revelation 
ever given of his own inner life, for some twelve years 
of his sojourn on this earth ; affords the most private peep 
into the sanctuary of his soul that was kept so closely cur- 
tained to the gaze of his contemporaries, and tells us more 
about his own self than all that has been gathered of him 
since the day of his death. By its help we may enter the 
early garden of his dramatic mind — the very site whereof 
seemed lost — and trace certain tap-roots of his nature ; see 
how they first put forth their feelers to take hold of 
that human world which they were to ramify through and 
through, and embrace all round. These life-roots of his, 
that germinated in the Sonnets to flower at their fullest in 
the Dramas, we can now hold up to the light as we might 
contemplate the hyacinth in its water-glass, with its fine 
fibres below, and its consummate flower above. 

Hitherto half the matter and all the most precious part 
of the meaning have been lost sight of. We have missed 
the points that touch life the nearest, and the traits that 
bring us the closest to Shakspeare. The light of nature 



THE ENRICHMENT FROM REALITY. 443 

has been put out, and the sonnets have lacked the living 
glow. We have been shamefully cheated by impoverish- 
ing impositions. The images that are figured facts 
coloured from the life, have hitherto been mere phantoms, 
making a dumb show of poetry. But once we can see 
and believe that our Poet is dealing with realities, the 
rekindled light illumines everything. The sonnets are all 
astir with a more vital existence. The dust of words is 
all a-sparkle, the wayside common-places flower again ; 
the world of fancy grows summer-green and golden ; a 
new soul has come into the sonnets ! They gain im- 
mensely in beauty, gravity, and fitness to subject, when 
we have reached their underlying realities, and are won- 
drously enriched when ranged in contrast and set jew eh 
like, 4 each other's beams to share,' wearing the diverse 
colours of the various characteristics. All their poetic quali- 
ties are enhanced by our getting at the right relationship 
of persons. Truth is ever the eternal basis of the highest 
beauty, and as we reach the truth here the meaning 
deepens indefinitely, the poetry brightens in a loftier light. 
The solemn thought is more sagely fine, the tenderness 
more pathetic, the feeling more significant, the fancy more 
felicitous, the strength more potent, the sweetness more 
virginal, the illustration more appropriate. We are no 
longer hindered in our enjoyment of the divinely-dainty 
love-poetry, that could only have been offered to a 
woman, and which seems to flush the page with the 
vernal tints of spring and the purple light of love, by the 
feeling that makes Englishmen ' scunner ' to see two men 
kiss each other, or hear them woo one another in amorous 
words. 

We now see that these sonnets transcend all others 
as much as his plays are above those of his contem- 
poraries. ' Shakspeare's divine Sonnets/ they were 
nobly named by Elizabeth Barrett Browning ; but how 
intensely human they are, how exquisitely natural, 



444 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

could not be known till now, when, for the first time, 
the real heart-beat of them may be felt. And by 
as much as they grow in meaning, in vivid life, in 
morality, does their writer gain in manliness. Hitherto 
they have been read in sad uncertainty of Shakspeare's 
drift, or with sadder certainty of his moral delin- 
quency. For the first time we can read them without 
fear or trembling lest some apparition of the Poet's 
guilt should rise up vast and shadowy, and as we might 
try to stammer excusingly, much larger than life. We 
can now sit down to their banquet of beauty without 
being nervously apprehensive about the ghost rising. We 
may see that the most passionate of the sonnets are not ne- 
cessarily the travail of his own soul and sweat- drops of his 
own agony ; all the more perplexing to us, because he had 
apparently put himself and us to the torture when there 
was no need. We can breathe more freely, feel a little 
calmer, when we do comprehend that he did not crucify 
himself for the whole world to see his shame ; did not make 
all the poetic capital possible out of his friend ; and, hav- 
ing handed him over to his enemies, hang himself publicly, 
Judas-like, in a fit of repentance. And we shall soon 
feel that it is not so very marvellous a thing that 
the most dramatic of poets should have at times employed 
the dramatic method in his sonnets. Especially when his 
subject was real life — the life and the loves of those who 
were so dear to him — in singing of which some disguise 
was demanded by the nature of the case ; the marked 
position of his friends. 

The sonnets have had many readers who felt there 
was much more in them than had yet been found, and 
who would have been only too glad if they could have 
got to the root of the matter by means of such a theory 
as is now propounded. Charles Lamb, for instance. 
He was a reader of the sonnets. One who would have 
brooded over them till his heart ran over in the quaintest 



THE PRIVACY OF LOVERS AND FRIENDS. 415 

babblement of loving words, if he might only have grasped 
the revelation that flashed out of them by evanescent 
gleams, and left the darkness more bewildering than ever. 
But to catch the Protean spirit, and hold it, and compel it 
to declare itself in a recognisable shape, was as tantalizing 
and provoking a task as trying to arrest the reflection of 
a face in water all in motion, with the sunbeams dancing 
on it, and the eyes completely dazzled. This will explain 
why the sonnets have had so few commentators, when the 
other works of Shakspeare have collected such a host. 
The wisest readers have been content to rest with Mr. 
Dyce in his declaration, that after repeated perusals, he 
was convinced that the greater number of them was com- 
posed in an assumed character, on different subjects, and 
at different times, for the amusement, and probably at 
the suggestion of the author's intimate associates. And 
having cracked the nut, as I think, we find this to be the 
very kernel of it ; only my theory unmasks the characters 
assumed, unfolds the nature of the various subjects, 
traces the different times at which they were composed, 
and identifies those intimate associates of Shakspeare who 
supplied both suggestion and subjects for his sonnets. It 
brings us, like the Prince in search of his Sleeping Beauty, 
to the inmost nook of Shakspeare 's poetry ; the magic 
hermitage to which the invention of Southampton 4 gave 
light,' and which was locked up and the key given to 
Herbert two centuries and a half ago. We shall find 
everything nearly as the Poet left it, for the place is 
sacred from the touch of Time. The friends and lovers 
are here pictured as in life, wearing the dresses they wore 
of old, and looking for us as they looked in the eyes of 
each other. As we break the stillness the life seems to 
begin again, the colour comes back to the faces, and the 
sound of breathing is heard in the charmed chamber of 
imagery which has been sealed in silence for so long. We 
have come secretly into the presence of Shakspeare him- 



446 SHAKSPEABE'S SONNETS. 

self. Does lie resent this intrusion ? Do the smiling 
brows darken at our coming ? I trust not, I think not. 
If I have rightly interpreted the feeling of our Poet 
for his friend Southampton, he would willingly reach 
a hand from heaven to place the rightful wreath on his 
brow. So fully did he once mean to set a crown of im- 
mortal flowers where Fortune had bound her thorns, only 
he was hindered by one of those complications of life 
that perplex human nature, with circumstances absurdly 
insufficient, and so often foil intention, and drag down 
the lifted hand. 

Although I maintain that our Poet wrote dramatic 
sonnets for the Earl of Southampton at his own request, 
and that, in these, much of the Earl's character is caught 
and reflected, as Shakspeare could not fail to touch 
nature whatsoever his standpoint, yet I do not say he 
undertook to complete the circle of that character in the 
compass of a certain number of sonnets. It is the court- 
ship rather than the character which is Shakspeare's sub- 
ject, only character will be visible in courtship as in other 
things, and so we get glimpses of the Earl's. But our 
Poet uses the dramatic method with subtle art in these 
'poems, for purposes of his own, in the way he makes the 
Earl speak of himself and his doings, hoping, no doubt, 
that the silent eloquence of certain lines might prove 
their best. He had pleaded in the earlier sonnets — 

6 0, learn to read what silent love hath writ, 
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit ! ' 

And at times I think he inserts something scarcely war- 
ranted, if he were bound by the strictest dramatic pro- 
priety. He suggests more to the Earl than might be 
absolutely conveyed in the sound of the sonnet. He seeks 
an echo from the inner sense. In the confessional sonnets, 
as we may call them, after so strong a self-condemnation, 
so long a list of wilful errors and wanton sins against true 



THE ESSEX INFLUENCE. 447 

love, the excuses are certainly very weak and puerile, even 
for a lover to whom much is to be pardoned. If Shak- 
speare were the speaker, they would be despicable, but for 
Southampton they are trivial and poor. He himself must 
have seen how shallow after the admissions of such deep 
wrong. If he felt guilty when reading the confessions, 
the consciousness must have increased when he saw the 
excuses. The case would look bad if these were the best 
that Shakspeare could make for his dear -friend. 

6 Nevertheless,' the Poet would seem to say, ' these are 
the best I can find for you ; I know they are poor indeed, 
but that is no fault of mine. I have always done my 
utmost to make you look in the eyes of others as you 
show to me at heart. Indeed, I rather strained a point, 
you know, for a particular occasion, (in sonnet 70 p. 226). 
I have excused your follies, and your treatment of Mistress 
Vernon ingeniously as I could, but you see how little, 
really, there is to be said.' 

In the same way I find evidence that his own feeling 
fights, all it can under the conditions, against the influence 
of Essex over the Earl of Southampton. It was purely 
owing to this influence which sprang out of his love for 
the Earl of Essex's cousin, that Southampton came so near 
to losing his head ; this he confessed on his Trial. His 
share in the guilt arose from his personal affection rather 
than from any rebel ambition. And, I doubt not that 
Shakspeare, the peerless reader of character, the friend 
who had such ' precious seeing ' in his eye — who loved 
the Earl of Southampton with such a manly tenderness, 
had his boding dread and prophesying fear of this in- 
fluence proving fatal in the end. He must have caught 
hints, heard whispers of the Earl of Essex and the Lady 
Eich's intrigue with the Scots' King ; it was a family 
affair, and Southampton had become as one of the family ; 
affianced in friendship and bound in love. He himself 
was induced to lend his pen once or twice in the Essex 



448 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

service. But I am sure that he did not like the look of 
things, and he divined that bad would come of the con- 
nexion for the Earl, his friend. This is the fear, this is 
the bitterness of the sonnets spoken by Elizabeth Vernon 
to Lady Eich. Her great grief is not only that the lady 
has stolen or tried to steal her lover, but that she herself 
should be the cause of his having been brought within 
range of an influence from which she anticipates dan- 
ger to the EarL She is bound to the Lady Eich per- 
force — she is a prisoner in her power — 'pent in thee,' 
and ' mortgaged ' to her will — that is understood — that, 
she thinks, ought to be enough, without the Earl being 
made a slave to such a slavery. And she speaks stingingly 
of the ' bond' which binds them all up together ; a fc bond' 
which is not one of love : says she was cruel herself to 
bring the Earl into such an entanglement, and it is mean 
of her cousin, the Lady Eich, to take advantage of what 
she has unwittingly done — to sue him, distress to the 
uttermost, him who only became a debtor — placed him- 
self in Lady Eich's power — amatory or political— for Eliza- 
beth Vernon's sake ! Here, I think, Shakspeare's own 
personal feeling recognisably peeps out. The earnest 
expression, ' let my heart be his guard,' has in . it the 
yearning desire of our Poet to shield his friend from the 
danger which his quick instinct foreboded. Thus I account 
for the expression in which Shakspeare calls those who 
have died on the block the ' fools of Time.' This, if 
Essex were included, would be unfriendly on the part of 
his friend, Southampton, who is the speaker in that son- 
net. I take it that Essex is included, so far as the writer 
is concerned, but that the writer's feeling shapes the 
speaker's expression. The dramatic mask slips aside for 
a moment, or Shakspeare takes the liberty of telling the 
Earl what his own estimate of Essex's character and con- 
duct really is. He looked upon him as one of the fools 
of Time, the restless, impatient, fretful fool — the ' weary 



DOUBTFUL READINGS DETERMINED. 449 

knight/ he called himself — who would not wait for the 
eternal audit but must force affairs or hurry himself to 
the last account, and died to make sport for the time. 
Of course we do not know but what this may have been 
Southampton's opinion of the man who so foolishly thought 
to shake a throne which was so firmly founded in the 
affection, and smilingly surrounded with the strength of 
a great-hearted people. 

The present interpretation will give a verdict against 
which there is no appeal in the case of some readings 
that have been hitherto disputed and doubtful. The most 
obvious way of trying to get out of a difficulty has been 
to suspect that the printers have given us a corrupt 
text, but there are many instances in which this method 
is not at all satisfactory. For example, in the lines of 
sonnet 70 — 

'So thou be good, slander doth but approve 
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of Time.' 

Malone and Steevens both fail to make out the meaning. 
The former asks, ' What idea does worth wooed of, that is 
by, Time present ? ' and says, ' Perhaps the Poet means that 
however slandered his friend may be at present, his worth 
shall be celebrated in all future time.' Steevens replies 
that he has already shown, on the authority of Ben Jon- 
son, that 'of Time' means of the then present one, and 
says, ' Perhaps we are to disentangle the transposition of 
the passage thus — " So thou be good, slander being woo'd 
of Time, doth but approve thy worth the greater " — i.e., if 
you are virtuous, slander, being the favourite of the age, 
only stamps the stronger mark of approbation on your 
merit.' Another commentator asks, 'May we not read, 
"being wood of Time?" taking wood for an epithet applied 
to slander, signifying frantic, doing mischief at random. 
I can make no other sense of the words as printed.' The 
present reading alone solves the difficulty. The person 

G G 



450 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

addressed being that Earl of Southampton whose marriage 
with Elizabeth Vernon was forbidden by Queen Elizabeth, 
who hindered their coming together for some years after 
the Earl began to court his Mistress. He is spoken of as 
'wooed by Time' — not the worth — because he is kept 
waiting. And whilst waiting, and having to hold the 
bridle-hand over the impetuous passion of love, the Poet 
says, ' So you be good and keep pure, Slander shall only 
serve to prove your worth the greater because of the 
position in which you are placed, having thus to wait ; 
being thus " wooed of Time !" ' We see by sonnet 115 
how fearful the writer had been of ' Time's tyranny ' over 
his friend. 

Again, in sonnet 75, the speaker says — 

' And for the peace of you I hold such strife 
As twixt a miser and his wealth is found.' 

Malone remarks, e the context seems to require that we 
should rather read, " for the price of you," or, " for the 
sake of you." The conflicting passions described by the 
Poet were not produced by a regard to the ease or quiet 
of his friend, but by the high value he set on his esteem ; 
yet, as there seems to have been an opposition intended 
between peace and strife, I do not suspect any corruption 
in the text.' This is an acute observation. The critic 
perceives there is something wrong; the character of 
the conflicting feelings is not suitable to Shakspeare as 
the speaker, yet he suspects that it goes too deep for a 
mere change of phrase. He saw as profoundly as could 
be seen on the personal interpretation. But we shall 
fathom a little deeper and find a firmer bottom when we 
have got such a speaker as Southampton addressing his 
Mistress, and. when we grasp his character and the conflict 
of his affection with the outward circumstances of his life, 
and see him holding such strife with himself for the peace 
of his beloved. 



TRESENT THEORY A TOUCHSTONE OF TRUTH, 451 

There is a story which tells how a girl had to run a 
race with a vase of water on her head and was not to 
overspill a drop of it if she would win her lover. This 
would aptly symbol the lot of the Earl in bearing his 
love and trying to keep it steady through the strife 
within and the storms without. That is what Shak- 
speare's line expresses as the pith of his meaning. In this, 
as in the previous instance, we may see how the Poet has 
crowded a world of specialty — of human character and 
external condition — into a single phrase ! Nothing could 
be so perfect for their purpose, — no other words could 
say so much, — as these which are the perplexities of critic 
cism until we get the right theory of interpretation, and 
then for the first time we see how procreant, how inclu- 
sive, how Shakspearian they are. The touches which 
are nearest to Nature are just those that make the matter 
the most remote from us until we have got the proper 
clue to their meaning. 

One conjectural emendation made by Malone is ren- 
dered invincible by my theory. Line 9, sonnet 41 
(p. 207), reads in the Quarto : ' Ah, me, but yet thou 
mightst my seat forbear.' Malone suggested and printed 
' my Sweet ' instead of c my seat,' an expression much 
more appropriate to the tender appeal of the woman 
speaker in my interpretation of the sonnet, and still 
more in the spirit and manner of Shakspeare who would 
surely not have talked of 'forbearing a seat ! ' Mr. 
Dyce thinks the Quarto reading well supported by a 
quotation from ' Othello ' made by Boaden, in which, 
however, there is no likeness to forbearing a seat. The 
inner feeling of the sonnet goes to prove more than 
any outside comparison, else it might be shown ad infi- 
nitum what a fond and favourite expression of the Poet's 
this Sweet is. In the ' Lover's Complaint ' we find ' 0, 
my Sweet' In the ' Two Gentlemen of Verona,' ' Sweet ! 
except not any.' In the ' Tempest,' * Sweet, now silence.' 

G G 2 



452 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

In ' Othello,' ' The sooner Sweet ! for you/ In ' Love's 
Labour's Lost,' ' Take thou this, my Sweet.' In ' Troilus 
and Cressida,' ' Sweet, bid me hold my tongue !' In the 
6 Comedy of Errors,' c Sweet, now make haste.' And in 
4 Eomeo and Juliet,' ' Do so, and bid my Sweet prepare to 
chide/ 

I might give further examples, but these will suffice to 
show what I mean by saying that the present reading of 
the sonnets settles various moot questions once for all. 
Having got the key to the inmost character, the shaping 
spirit of the sonnets, we can now judge of their external 
characteristics and distinguish betwixt the essential and 
the accidental ; the master-touch of Shakspeare and the 
bungling of the printers. 

My reading owes but little to my arrangement of the 
sonnets. I have not had to pull the book to pieces and 
put the sonnets together as the letters of a name might 
be transposed, until a pretty anagram was formed. The 
theory necessitated no such ingenious puzzle-work. I 
did not bring the theory to the sonnets, but the sonnets 
supplied the theory. They confessed their own secret, 
though somewhat coyly. They told their own series of 
stories, and once I had got hold of a story, the sub- 
ject gathered up its own proper parts. So naturally 
did the mutually dependent portions draw together and 
reveal their share of the secret that at times I could 
only wait and see how things were going, only ob- 
serve whilst they combined, as one might watch some 
chemical experiment which should produce a result half 
expected and half unexpected, the unforseen portion be- 
ing by far the most important. Looking back now at the 
making out, it does not appear like restoring a statue 
piecemeal, after long search for the scattered fragments, 
so much as getting a glimpse of something buried, dig- 
ging away the earth, and coming upon, the statue perfect 
almost as it came from the hand of the master. So pal- 



THE ORIGINAL COPY. 453 

pably are the facts necessary to rny reading all there, and 
so little does the reading depend on the arrangement of 
the sonnets ! 

It will be seen that one of the two greatest changes 
made occurs in restoring three of the sonnets that have 
been heretofore printed among the first series. These have 
been incorporated with the Herbert group ; not with- 
out sufficient sanction. In the old arrangement, they 
are numbered 57, 58, and 96 ; in the present, they will 
be found the 7th, 12th, and 13th of the Herbert group. 
If the first copy had been followed exactly, and had not 
been altered to suit a theory, however silently it was 
working in the corrector's mind, it must have been per- 
ceived ere now that sonnet 57 was one of those that contain 
puns on the name of ' Will.' The last two lines of this 
sonnet, as first printed, run thus : — ■ 

' So true a fool is love, that, in jour Will, 
Tho' you do anything, he thinks no ill/ 1 

This at once raised a doubt whether the sonnet ought 
not to have been placed with the later ones. And further 
looking into the matter, convinced me that this and the 
other two sonnets mentioned belong, by the nature and 
phrasing of the passion they express, to the sonnets which 
I hold to have been written for William Herbert. They 
are too unmanly in their extravagant protestations to be 
worthy of the character and the affection of Southampton, 
as Shakspeare has mirrored them both for us. He knew 
the value of all such vows. 2 If we trace the Earl right 

1 Various unwarrantable alterations having been made in these sonnets, it 
becomes necessary to go back to the early copy. Fortunately this has been 
admirably reprinted from an unrivalled original, by means of photo-zinco- 
graphy. It has been of inestimable use to me. 

2 i Vows were ever brokers to defiling.' 

A Lover's Lament. 
' Do not believe his vows, for they are brokers; mere implorators of unholy 
suits.' Hamlet. 



454 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

through the sonnets devoted to him we shall find the 
passion is pure ; the man is manly. In the first of these, 
(29 — p. 166), we see a noble spirit almost despising itself for 
having misgiving moods of mind, which are very natural 
to his condition. The note struck is essentially manly ; 
the love expressed is warm and deep, but it has no whine 
of sentiment ; no abjectness of spirit. His bearing is no 
more lowered because of his fervour of feeling, than it is 
because of Fortune's malice. In sonnet 36 (p. 176) he has 
done something which makes it necessary that for his 
Mistress's sake he should leave her, lest the ' guilt ' which 
he bewails, and is sorry for, should bring her shame. 
Here there is the touch of magnanimity hi his repentance ; 
nothing weak or grovelling. On the journey, and during 
his absence, amidst all the loving conceits and tender home- 
ward yearnings, the quaint expression of fond fancies, the 
touches of jealous thought, the speaker never abases his 
manhood, and the love is crystal-clear in its depths of 
purity — shining most clearly when the mind is most dis- 
turbed. All through, the passion is of the kind that exalts 
a man ; it tends upward. The manliness of sonnet 49 
(p. 233), mixed with the conflicting feelings and domi- 
nating over them, is especially fine. So is the self-abne- 
gation and sacrifice of sonnet 88 (p. 233). It is the voice 
of a true man, and noble lover, even though the dress be 
a caprice of fashion or of fondness. The love may be like 
devouring flame, as in sonnet 75 (p. 229), but there is no 
tendency to eat dirt and delight in it. The lover keeps 
the attitude and aspect of manhood, and does not wallow. 
If we would learn how naturally noble is the Earl's love 
for Elizabeth Vernon, we may feel it in sonnet 95 (p. 236), 
where it is tried terribly by the 'ill-report' that has reached 

( Well, do not swear ! ' 

Juliet to Romeo. 
* No ; not an oath ! 
Swear Priests and cowards and men cautelous.' 

Brutus, in Julius Ccesar. 



THE TWO LADY-COUSINS ADDRESSED. 455 

his ears, with regard to her behaviour at Court. How 
large-hearted and almost parental is the cautioning ten- 
derness ! How firm also the belief in the diamond-like 
nature of his lady's purity, in spite of what the busy tongues 
have whispered — Only ' take heed, dear heart, of the large 
privilege which your beauty and your position confer on 
you ! ' In his most piteous pleadings, and most humili- 
ating confessions, it is a noble fellow at heart ; whatsoever 
buffetings of fortune and slips of the foot he may have 
had, he has borne high that torch of his love, and tried to 
keep it burning pure and bright. His love has ennobled 
his manhood — straightened it upward — makes it dilate to 
a prouder height, as in the farewell sonnet 90, (p. 246), 
where the poetry is quick with the feeling of a wronged, 
heroic soul ; written in the very life-blood that runs from 
wounds unjustly given, and having the pathetic force of 
a strong man in tears. 

All through, the passion is perfectly pure, and the 
sonnets are spoken to a perfectly pure woman by him 
who has the sole right to caution her when she ' flirts ' 
with others, as we may understand it, and the Court gos- 
sips make ' lascivious comments ' on what she has been 
doing in ' sport ' — half spite, half fun — when the two 
lovers were on tiff. Southampton would not have called 
himself a ' slave,' a ■ sad slave ' to the woman he loved. 
He would not have prostrated himself in any unmanly way 
at her feet like the speaker in sonnets 57-8, (p. 373). His 
was the love in honour which demanded the ; mutual ren- 
der, only me for thee.' We know that he did think the 
4 bitterness of absence sour 1 ' — did dare to ' question with 
his jealous thought' where she was, and what she was 
doing. He did think ill, and warn her when he heard a 
certain report of her doings. He was no fool in love, and 
did not tolerate being befooled. Nor was his the patience 

1 So did Shakspeare in one of his personal sonnets (39 — p. 171). 



456 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

that, ' tame to sufferance,' would ' bide each check' and put 
up with all kinds of trifling. Nor did he consider that it 
belonged to his lady to pardon herself for her ' self-doing 
crimes.' Southampton rightfully held his lady responsible 
to him for what she had done when he reproached her. 
Nor did he think that errors were translated to truths 
when seen in her ! 

The spirit of these sonnets is one with the rest of 
Herbert's. The 'sad slave' and wretched vassal of son- 
nets 57-8, (p. 373), is the ' proud heart's slave ' and ' vassal 
wretch' of sonnet 141, (p. 376). The passion in both is 
a fire that crumbles the manhood from within. The 
hectic hue of its lower nature is lurid in every line. The 
apparent magnanimity is only prostration for a selfish 
purpose. And the lady's character also is as distinctly 
seen by the same light. The lover protests too much, 
offers too much — would fling himself into any puddle, like 
Ealeigh's cloak, for the lady to step on. Then he has no 
sole right to address her amorously — he must be content 
to take his place with the rest of Circe's suitors, and his 
turn in winning her smile ! — 

6 I am to wait, tho' waiting so "be hell, 
Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well.' 

And — 

c So true a fool is love, that in your 'Will,' 
Tho' you do anything, he thinks no ill.' 

It is the same lady who inspired sonnet 96 (p. 370) ; all 
the images are stamped in her likeness. Southampton 
did not think the faults of his lady were graces in her. 
His jealous thought was for the lady herself, and not on 
behalf of the innocent ■ gazers ' whom she might lead 
astray. Such a suggestion would be utter profanity ; the 
comparison implied, in the ' stern wolf,' an insult ! The feel- 
ing of sonnet 95 (p. 236), is filled with most anxious love — 
jealous of 'trifles light as air.' The jealousy of the other is 
altogether ironical ; this is proved by the repetition of the 



OLD AND NEW ARRANGEMENT. 457 

two lines which were used with so different a meaning in 
sonnet 36 (p. 176). In every respect the spirit and look of 
the two sonnets are the perfect opposite of each other ; the 
object of the illustration is exactly reversed. The one lady 
is warned against those vices that lead astray, the other 
is asked not to use all her strength to lead others astray. 
One is all innocence and budding beauty cautioned against 
her ' sport ' on which the gossips talk freely. The other 
is pleaded with not to play the part of Wolf by trying to 
look as innocent as the Lamb. Of the one lady we may 
say, in the words of Lear, ' her eyes are fierce,' but the 
eyes of the other ' do comfort and not burn ! ' Of the one 
sonnet that it has an unhallowed glow, of the other that it 
wears the white halo of purity. 

Xext, I have taken three sonnets from the latter, or 
Herbert series, and restored them to those that illustrate 
Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy of Lady Eich. And here I 
may reiterate how satisfactorily this mixture of the sonnets 
illustrates my reading. Because the sonnets spoken to 
Lady Eich by her cousin were sent to her as well as those 
spoken by William Herbert, and they come back to us 
mixed up together, both in the ' Passionate Pilgrim ' and 
in Thorpe's Book ! That some of Herbert's should be 
mixed up with Elizabeth Vernon's, points to the proba- 
bility that the woman addressed so warmly by that lady 
and William Herbert is one and the same — Elizabeth 
Vernon's cousin, Lady Eich. In each case, too, the num- 
ber of sonnets that have changed places is the same. 

Eor the rest, there is proof of the intent to keep the 
Herbert series apart at the end of the book, the odd son- 
nets which were written for Southampton still later having 
been intermediately inserted with the others of his series. 
The last of these, written in 1603, on the Earl's re- 
lease from the Tower, was composed after ' Mr. W. H, 
became Earl of Pembroke, 1 therefore, according to my 

1 He succeeded to the title on the 19th of January, 1601. 



458 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

view, after the Herbert sonnets were written. It has 
been thrust in quite at random, still it is with the South- 
ampton sonnets. Then the 126th (p. 170) is a fragment ; 
it is printed in the quarto, with brackets to indicate the 
missing lines. It was unfinished, ergo, never sent, there- 
fore it would be amongst the loose papers of Shakspeare, 
and this, which belongs by tone and tint to a much 
earlier period, has been placed last of the Southampton 
series, and by its aid the Herbert group is marked off into 
its place apart. 

Some of the other batches of sonnets have shifted 
places, the Marlowe group is one of these. But in each 
case a dropped sonnet or two remains to indicate the 
right position and tell us where • the others should have 
been. The greatest confusion has been caused by the odd 
sonnets that have been let loose like riderless horses in the 
ranks to come in anywhere hap-hazard. I venture, how- 
ever, to affirm that I have got them approximately right, 
both in date and subject, and they will be found arranged 
in natural sequence with the help of such hints as they 
contain, so that each group shall best evolve its story. 

I now claim for my interpretation that it corrects the 
errors which have been made by superficial research, 
and clears up the mystery of Thorpe's inscription ; that 
it recovers for us the long-lost key wherewith Shakspeare 
unlocked his heart to his ' private friends ;' that it 
fathoms and unfolds the secret histories which have been 
a sealed book for two centuries and a half and solves one 
of the most piquant and important of all literary pro- 
blems ; makes the life-spirit that once breathed in these 
fragments stir and knit themselves together again to be- 
come a living body of facts, shaped objectively in some near 
likeness to the form originally worn in Shakspeare's mind 
. — a veritable presence before which all the phantom 
falsehoods must fade, and all ' such exsufnicate and blown 



THE PROBLEM SOLVED AT LAST. 459 

surmises ' as have attainted the sonnets and wronged the 
Poet must for ever pass away. 

I also claim for my Theory that it is proved by the ut- 
most evidence the nature of the case admits ; that the 
probabilities alone are such as to inspire a feeling of cer- 
tainty, — that these clothe themselves in a mail of poetic 
proof, a panoply of circumstantial evidence and confirma- 
tory facts. Attempting so much, it must be very assailable 
if wrong, only those who think me wrong must be able 
to set me right. Mere professions of unbelief or non- 
belief will be valueless ; their expression idle. My facts 
must be satisfactorily refuted, my Theory disproved 
simply and entirely, or, in the end, both will be accepted. 
I cannot expect the result of my explorations to be 
taken hi at first sight, for I myself best appreciate all the 
intricacies of the process, 1 and the many surprises of my 
discovery. Some readers will find it hard to believe that 
a thing like this has been left for me to accomplish. 
Kevertheless, the thing is done ; I can trust a certain 
spirit in the sonnets, that will go on pleading when my 
words cease ; and, as Shakspeare has written, the ' silence 
often of pure Innocence persuades when speaking fails.' 
Even so will his own innocence prevail, and with a per- 
fect trust in the soundness of my conclusions, I leave the 
matter for the judgement of that great soul of the world 
which is just. 

1 ' Had we a full biography of the Poet with all his surroundings, we 
might explain much that is obscure in these remarkable effusions, but by no 
process that I can conceive, may rue hope to seize the genuine allusions to facts 
that they contain, and succeed therefrom to illustrate and reanimate the life.' 
Life of Shakspeare, by William Watkiss Lloyd. 



460 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



'HIS SUGRED SONNETS 
AMONG HIS PRIVATE FRIENDS.' 

Meres. 



My reading of the sonnets gives new meaning to the 
words of Meres. It makes definite a somewhat vaorte 
though sure description. In 1598 he could have spoken 
only of the Southampton series, but he must have had an 
inkling of their true nature to have generalized thus 
successfully. He does not say Shakspeare's personal 
sonnets to a friend or a Patron. And we have only to 
substitute the dramatic for the fugitive character that has 
been ascribed to the sonnets, and his words admit all that 
my interpretation substantiates. They are ' sugred son- 
nets,' too, which means love-sonnets ; known to a circle 
of private friends, various of whom were concerned in 
their begettal, and all of whom could be appealed to in 
witness of their worth. In short Meres identifies the son- 
nets, up to 1598, as the love-sonnets of Shakspeare written 
for his private friends. The critic wrote "with an eye to 
these friends. And who were they ? 

His words mark the very time at which William Her- 
bert had joined the group and become one of those who 
took an interest in the sonnets. This young lord, from his 
love of poetry, was probably the one who talked most about 
the sonnets and made them known. Unquestionably he 
was one of the ' private friends ' referred to in connection 



THE PRIVATE FRIENDS. 4G1 

with Shakspeare's sonnets ; thus Meres puts us on the 
track pursued in a previous chapter. The Earl of South- 
ampton was of course the chief of these private friends 
publicly recognised. That fact is established on the 
Poet's own personal testimony, independently of the son- 
nets, although it could not be known apart from the 
present interpretation of them how secret a bosom-friend 
he was, how closely linked in habits of intimacy as those 
' whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love.' 

Southampton being so near and dear a friend of our 
Poet, it is only the most natural thing in the world that 
Elizabeth Vernon should be one of his friends also. How 
could she help being interested in one who had addressed 
those earlier sonnets to Southampton, urging him to 
marry, and sought to twine about him so many flowery 
bands, lead him to the shrine of wedded love, and bring 
under a nobler direction the riotous energies of youth, so 
apt to break out of bounds, and run to waste ? She must 
have loved Shakspeare for his fatherly watchfulness of the 
young Earl's career and conduct, his anxious jealousy of 
all immoral companions ; and it is only natural to con- 
clude that she was one of the ' private friends ' of whom 
Meres makes mention. 

So much might have been assumed, if the sonnets had 
told us no more. 

The Lady Eich's link of relationship, as illustrated by 
Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy is very obvious and imme- 
diate. She being Mistress Vernon's cousin ; her com- 
panion in childhood and at Court ; the starry object of 
Sidney's sonnets, having herself acquired a taste for 
poetry, it was not possible that the sonnets in celebration 
of Elizabeth Vernon's love and lover could have been un- 
known to her. According to the abstract reason of things, 
were there no other evidence, she must have been one of 
the group alluded to by Meres as acquainted with the 
sonnets. 



462 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

It is almost as impossible that the Earl " of Essex 
should not have been one of the friends in the critic's 
mind when he wrote of those amongst whom the sonnets 
privately circulated. Essex was something of a poet : he 
possessed the kindling poetic temperament and was 
fond of making verses ; a lover of literature, and the 
friend of poets. It was he who sought out Spenser when 
in great distress and relieved him, and, when that poet 
died, Essex buried him in Westminster Abbey. Being, 
as he was, so near a friend of Southampton, it could 
scarcely be otherwise than that he should have been a 
personal friend of Shakspeare. It is highly probable that 
some of the Poet's dramas were first performed at Essex 
House. In the chorus at the end of Henry V., Shak- 
speare introduces a prophecy of the Earl's expected suc- 
cesses in Ireland : 

* Were now the general of our gracious Empress. 
(As in good time he may) from Ireland coming, 
Bringing Eebellion broached upon his sword, 
How many would the peaceful city quit 
To welcome him T 

Also, one of the grounds upon which Essex was beheaded 
was the play which had been performed after it was al- 
tered for the purpose of adding the Deposition Scene. 
This alteration was in point of fact adduced by Coke as 
proof of the intentions of the conspirators to dethrone the 
Queen. It has been felt ere now that Shakspeare was in 
some way and to some extent implicated in the Essex 
attempt. The sonnets with the present rendering will 
supply the missing link of connection. He was known 
to Essex as the personal friend of Southampton and as 
the writer of sonnets on the affection of that Earl for 
Essex's cousin, Elizabeth Vernon ; in this wise Essex 
became one of the private friends to whom the sonnets 
were known in MS., as mentioned by Meres, and the 
Poet was induced to lend his pen at Southampton's re- 



KING JAMES'S LETTER TO SHAKSPEARE. 463 

quest to serve the Essex cause. John Davies, in his 
8 Scourge of Folly,' speaks of Shakspeare as having lost 
some chance of being promoted to the companionship of 
princes, under the reign of King James : — 

' Some say, good Will, which I in sport do sing, 
Hadst thou not played some parts in kingly sport, 
Thou hadst bin a companion for a King, 
And been a King among the meaner sort.' 

Now, although it is proved by entries in the ' Accounts 
of the Bevels ' and by the testimony of Ben Jonson, that 
Shakspeare's plays were in great favour at the Court of 
James, yet, it was not as a player and playwright that he 
would have been welcomed at Court so much as because 
he was the friend of the late Essex and the living South- 
ampton. James had the warmest greeting for the friends 
and partisans of Essex and honours were showered upon 
them. Davies's allusion accords with the tradition that 
James ' was pleased with his own hand to write an ami- 
cable letter to W. Shakspeare, which letter, though now 
lost, remained long in the hands of Sir William Dave- 
nant,' respecting which, Oldys, in a MS. note on his copy 
of Fuller's Worthies, states that the Duke of Buckingham 
(John Sheffield, that 'high-reaching Buckingham' who 
aspired to improve Shakspeare's ' Julius Caesar ' in his 
' Death of Marcus Brutus ') told Lintot that he had seen 
it in the possession of Davenant. This consideration 
respecting Shakspeare's private friends makes the letter a 
far greater likelihood. Sad to say, the Poet does not seem 
to have taken much to our Solomon 1 of Eoyal fools, but to 
have taken liberties with his character instead. 

It will be remembered that the queer love-epistle, over 
which Lord Eich shook his puzzled head, and which I con- 
jecture may have been the group of sonnets relating to his 
wife, was being sent by Lady Eich to her brother, the Earl 

1 ' Solomon, the son of David (Rizzio)/ he was called by Henry IV. of 
France. 



464 SHAKSPEABE'S SONNETS. 

of Essex, on its way in all probability, back to Elizabeth 
Vernon. And in the letters and verses of Essex will 
be found thoughts and expressions which almost prove 
his acquaintance with the sonnets in MS. In a letter to 
the Queen, written from Croydon, in the year 1595 
or 1596, there occurs a likeness remarkable enough to 
suggest that Essex was a reader of the sonnets as they 
were written. The Earl speaks, in absence from the 
Queen, when he is about to mount his horse for a gallop. 
He writes : ' The delights of this place cannot make me 
unmindful of one in whose sweet company I have joyed 
so much as the happiest man doth in his highest content- 
ment, and if my horse could run as fast as my thoughts 
do fly, I would as often make mine eyes rich in beholding 
the treasure of my love.' 1 It is superfluous to point out 
the resemblance to the thought in two of the sonnets 
spoken by the Earl of Southampton, when on horseback, and 
in absence from his Mistress. In Essex's letter of advice 
to the young Earl of Eutland, 1595, there are one or two 
touches that look like reminiscences of the early sonnets. 
Shakspeare says to his young friend, sonnet 54, after 
speaking of his outward graces : 

( Oh hoiv much more doth beauty beauteous seem, 
By that sweet ornament that truth doth give,' &c. 

Essex tells his young friend — ' Some of these things may 
serve for ornaments, and all of them for delights, but the 
greatest ornament is the inward beauty of the mind! 
Again, in a letter to the Queen, dated May, 1600, Essex 
writes : ' Four whole days have I meditated, most dear 
and most admired Sovereign, on these words that there 
are two kinds of angels — the one good, the other evil ; 
and that your Majesty wishes your servant to be accom- 
panied with the good;' 2 which sounds very like an echo 
to the 144th sonnet, beginning — 

1 Lives of the Devereux Earls of Essex, vol. i. p. 292. 

2 Birch's Memoirs of Elizabeth, vol. ii. p, 445. 



PROOFS OF ESSEX'S PERSONAL INTIMACY. 465 

' Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 
Which like two spirits do suggest me still ; 
The better angel is a man right fair, 
The worser spirit a Woman, coloured ill.' 

Of course the Earl might have seen this sonnet in the 
6 Passionate Pilgrim, the year before, but I hold that his 
acquaintanceship was much closer than that ; here is yet 
stronger proof ! 

In Shakspeare's 35th sonnet, the speaker excuses the 
person addressed, because 'all men make faults ;' and in a 
sonnet written by the Earl of Essex, ' in his trouble,' ! the 
speaker says 6 all men's faults do teach her to suspect.' 
Thus Essex says the faults of all men teach the Queen to 
suspect, and Shakspeare's speaker says the faults of all 
men teach her to forgive. The thought and expression of 
Shakspeare must have been in the mind of Essex, to have 
been so curiously turned. The likeness in the two last 
instances occurs in sonnets belonging to the group devoted 
to Elizabeth Vernon's jealousy of her cousin, which I 
suppose to be the epistle of 4 Dutch love,' sent by Lady 
Eich to her brother Eobert. 

In adducing evidence that Essex was one of Shakspeare's 
private friends, we have seen that the Poet lent his pen on 
two occasions for the Earl's service. I have now to sug- 
gest another instance. There is a copy of verses in ' Eng- 
land's Helicon,' (1600), reprinted from John Douland's 
6 First Book of Songs ; or, Ayres of four parts, with a 
Table ture for the Lute.' 2 It is an address to ' Cynthia.' 

6 My thoughts are winged with hopes, my hopes with love : 
Mount love unto the Moon in clearest night ! 
And say as she doth in the heavens move, 
In earth so wanes and waxeth my delight. 
And whisper this — but softly — in her ears, 
How oft Doubt hangs the head, and Trust sheds tears. 

. J Bill. Reg. MS., British Museum, 17, B. L, 

2 By Peter Short, 1597, folio. 
H H 



466 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

' And you, my thoughts that seem mistrust to carry, 
If for mistrust my Mistress you do blame ; 
Say, tho' you alter, yet, you do not vary, 
As she doth change, and yet remain the same. 
Distrust doth enter hearts, but not infect, 
And love is sweetest seasoned with suspect. 

6 If she for this with clouds do mask her eyes, 
And make the heavens dark with her disdain ; 
With windy sighs disperse them in the skies, 
Or with thy tears derobe ! them into rain. 

Thoughts, hopes, and love return to me no more, 
Till Cynthia shine as she hath shone before.' 

These verses have been ascribed to Shakspeare on the 
authority of a common-place book, which is preserved in 
the Hamburgh city library. In this the lines are subscribed 
W. S., and the copy is dated 1606. The little poem is 
quite worthy of Shakspeare's sonneteering pen and period. 
And the internal evidence is sufficient to stamp it as 
Shakspeare's, for the manner and the music, with their 
respective felicities, are altogether Shakspearian, of the 
earlier time. The alliteration in sound and sense ; the 
aerial fancy moving with such a gravity of motion ; the 
peculiar corruscation that makes it hard to determine 
whether the flash be a sparkle of fancy or the twinkle of 
wit, are all characteristic proofs of its authorship. No 
other poet of the period save Spenser could have been 
thus measuredly extravagant, and he would not have 
dared the perilous turn on ' mistress ' and ' mistrust.' 

Steevens pencilled the initials of Fulke Greville (Lord 
Brooke) against these lines. But we have no warrant for 
supposing them his, or that his poetic capacity w^as equal 
to them. 

1 ( Derobe. , This fine expression, so illustrative of Shakspeare's art of 
saying a thing in the happiest way at a word, Mr. Collier suspects ought to 
be ' dissolve ' ! ! Even so, if they were allowed, would some of his Critics 
dissolve Shakspeare out of his poetry. 



A RECOVERED LYRIC. 467 

The line, 

4 And love is sweetest seasoned with suspect ' 

surely comes from the same mint as 

( The ornament of beauty is suspect.' Sonnet 70. 

Also the line, 

6 And make the heavens dark with her disdain' 

is essentially Shakspearian ; one of those which occur at 
times, after threading the way daintily through intricate 
windings, sweeping out into the broader current with a 
full stroke of music and imagination, such as this from 
the 18th sonnet : 

4 But thy eternal summer shall not fade.' 

Then the ' windy sighs,' and the tears for rain are just 
as recognisable as a bit of the Greek mythology. Here is 
one of the Poet's pet trinkets of fancy. With him sighs 
and tears, ' poor fancy's followers ! ' are sorrow's wind 
and rain. 1 

I have not the least doubt of the poem being Shak- 
speare's own, and my suggestion is that it was written for 
the Earl of Essex, at a time when the Queen, ' Cynthia' 
was not shining on him with her favouring smile, and 

1 ( Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain' 

A Lover's Lament. 
' The winds thy sighs' 

Romeo and Juliet. Act iii. sc. 5. 
* We cannot call her winds and waters, sighs and tears' 

Antony and Cleopatra. 
'Where are my tears? Rain, rain, to lay this wind.' 

Troilus and Cressida. 
' Give not a windy night a rainy morrow.' Sonnet 90. (i. e. give not a 
night of sighs a morning of tears). 

' The sun not yet thy sighs from heaven clears.' 

Romeo and Juliet. Act ii. sc. 3. 
In these last the mental likeness is very striking. 



468 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

that Essex had it set to music, by Douland, to be sung 
at Court. 

The group of Shakspeare's private friends, for whom 
the sonnets were written, being thus far identified, it re- 
mains to be seen whether, by way of further corroboration, 
we can follow any trace of their characters in the plays. 
We may be quite sure that Shakspeare was hard at work, 
whilst, to all appearance, merely at play in the sonnets. 
He would mark the workings of Time and Fortune on 
those in whom he took so tender an interest, wistfully as 
a bird watches the mould upturned by the plough, and 
pick up the least germs of fact fresh from life, and treasure 
up the traits of his friends for a life beyond life in his 
dramas. He had followed' Southampton's course year 
after year . anxiously as Goethe watched his cherry-tree 
in patient hope of seeing fruit at last ; and one season the 
spring-frosts killed the blossom, another year the birds ate 
the buds, then the caterpillars destroyed the green leaves, 
and next there came a blight, and still he watched and 
hoped to see the ripened fruit ! 

Shakspeare's finest and most impressive characters are 
so real and profound, because of the amount of real life at 
the heart of them, that breathes beneath the robe of other 
times ; the mask of other names. Living men and women 
move and have their being in his dramas. And the great- 
est of all reasons why his characters exist for all time is, 
because he so closely studied the men and women of his 
own time, and wrote with one hand touching warm 
reality, the other on the pen. Some of those who must 
have come the nearest home to him, would be the ' private 
friends ' of his ' sugred sonnets.' 

For example, we might assume without further proof 
that if the Lady Eich sat to Shakspeare for some of his 
sonnet-sketches, she would be certain to reappear, full- 
picture, in some of his plays. She was too rare a product 
of Nature not to leave an impress on the mould of his 



WORKING FROM THE LIFE. 469 

imagination that would not easily pass away — an image 
that would give its similitude to characters afterwards 
fashioned by the Poet. If he wrote about her on account 
of others, we may be sure he did on his own. Sidney 
had thus challenged the poets of his age — 

( But if (both for your love and skill) your name 
You seek to nurse at fullest breasts of Fame, 
Stella behold ! and then begin to indite.' Sonnet 15. 

And Shakspeare was not in the least likely to neglect the 
hint. 

Where the character was less marked, it would still 
be sufficient for suggestion, and with him initials were 
enough ; from a small seed he could rear the consummate 
flower. His promises of immortality made to the Earl of 
Southampton in the sonnets, have had such fulfilment in 
the plays as the world but little dreams of. Every heroic 
trait and chivalric touch in the Earl's nature would be 
carefully gathered up to reappear enriched in some such 
favourite type of English character as King Henry V. 
Who but Henry Wriothesley, the gay young gallant, the 
chivalrous soldier, the beau sabreur and dashing leader of 
horse, could have lived in the mind's eye of Shakspeare 
when he wrote — 

6 1 saw young Harry with his beaver on, 
His cuisses on bis thighs, gallantly armed, 
Eise from the ground like feathered Mercury ! 
He vaulted with such ease into his seat, 
As if an angel dropped down from the clouds, 
To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus 
And witch the world with noble horsemanship.' 

Here we have the very man to the life, named by name, 
just as the Poet had seen him mount horse for the wars 
when he bade him farewell, and triumphed in his pride. 
The words are put into Sir Eichard Vernon's mouth, but 
it is Shakspeare's heart that speaks in them. Camden 



470 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

relates that about the end of March (1599) Essex set 
forward for Ireland, and was 'accompanied out of 
London with a fine appearance of nobility and the 
most cheerful huzzas of the common people.' And, 
seeing that Shakspeare in Henry Y. makes his allusion to 
Essex's coming home, I infer that in Henry IV. he 
pictures Southampton as he saw him at starting, on a 
similar occasion, dressed in heroic splendours, to his proud 
loving eyes ; the noblest, the fieriest of the troop of young 
gallants, all noble, all on fire, ' all clinquant, all in gold ! ' 
When Eowland White saw Southampton off for Ireland, 
in 1600, he could not help exclaiming, ' He is a very fine 
gentleman, and loves you (Sir Bobert Sidney) well.' 

Also, the troubled history of Southampton's love for 
Elizabeth Vernon, and the opposition of Fortune, much 
dwelt upon in the sonnets, could not fail to give a more 
tragic touch to the play, a more purple bloom to the poetry, 
when the subject was the sorrow of true but thwarted love. 
I fancy that Shakspeare was working a good deal from the 
life and the love of his friends when he wrote his 'Borneo 
and Juliet ; ' the Queen's opposition to their marriage stand- 
ing in the place of that ancient enmity of the two Houses. 
There is much of Southampton's character and fate in 
Borneo the unlucky, doomed to be crossed in his dearest 
wishes, whose name was writ in sour Misfortune's book. 
The Poet must have often preached patience to his 
friend, like the good Friar Lawrence, and at the same 
time apprehended with foreboding feeling and presaging 
fear some tragic issue from the clashing of such a tem- 
perament with so trying a fortune. There are expressions 
pointing to the lady of the early sonnets as being in the 
Poet's mind when he was thinking of Juliet. A remarkable 
image in the 27th sonnet is also made use of in Borneo's 
first exclamation on seeing Juliet for the first time. In 
the sonnet the lady's remembered beauty is said to be 
' like a jewel hung in ghastly night,' which 



THE POET'S BYPLAY. 471 

' Makes black Night beauteous, and her old face new.' 
Borneo says — 

6 Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of Night 
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear.' 

Considering who the sonnets were written for, this figure 
reappears in too pointed a way not to have some sugges- 
tive significance. Looked at in this light, the question of 
Juliet: — 

( Art thou not Romeo and a Montague ? ' 

comes upon us with luminous force ; for the fact is, that 
Southampton was a Montague by the mother's side, she 
being Mary, daughter of Anthony Browne, fair Viscount 
Montague, which fact calls to mind what has always seemed 
a little bit of the Nurse's nonsense in the fourth scene of 
the Second Act of this drama :— 

e Nurse. — Doth not rosemary and Romeo both begin with a 
letter? 

Romeo. — Ay, Nurse ; what of that ? both with an R. 

Nurse. — Ah, mocker ! that's the dog's name: R is for the — 
No — I know it begins with some other letter : and she hath the 
prettiest sententious of it, of you and Rosemary, that it would 
do you good to hear it. 

Romeo. — Commend me to thy lady.' 

Now, here is more meant than meets the eye. The Nurse 
is being used. There is something that she does not 
quite fathom, yet her lady does. She is prettily wise over 
a pleasant conceit. Borneo understands it too, if we 
may judge by his judicious answer. The Nurse, however, 
knows there is another letter involved. There is a name 
that begins with a different letter to the one sounded, 
but this name is not in the Play, therefore it cannot be 
Bosemary which the Nurse knows does not begin with an 
4 B.' Name and letter have to do with Borneo, the lady 



472 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

sees how, but the Nurse, who started to tell the lover a 
good joke about Juliet's playing with his name, is puzzled 
in the midst of it ; can't make it out exactly, but it's a 
capital -joke, and it would do his heart good to see how 
it pleases the lady, who is learned in the matter, though 
she, the Nurse, be no scholar ! We shall find a meaning 
for the first time if Southampton be the original of Borneo, 
and make sense of the Nurse's nonsense by supposing, as 
we well may, that here is an aside on the part of the Poet 
to his friends, and that the name which begins with another 
letter than the one first sounded is Wriothesley ! 

This bit of Shakspeare's fun has perplexed his commenta- 
tors most amusingly ; their hunt after the Dog and the 
' dog's letter E' being the best fun of all. The only ' dog' in 
the Nurse's mind is that ' mocker ' of herself, the audacious 
lover of her young lady. Borneo has put her out of 
reckoning by saying ' both with an B,' And the Nurse, 
with the familiarity of an old household favourite, and a 
chuckle of her amorous old heart, says, 'Ah, you dog, 
you, 'B' is for ' Bosemary,' and also for — - no, there's 
some other letter, and my lady knows all about it ; only 
she says this half to herself, as she tries to catch the miss- 
in^ meaning of her speech, the very point of her story. 
'Bosemary' is merely the herb of that name. 'That's 
for remembrance' with Juliet, not for the name of a clog ! 
The second Dog is Tyrwhitt's, not Shakspeare's. 

In the present instance the Poet is using the Nurse for 
the amusement of his friends, just as he uses Mrs. Quickly 
and Dogberry for ours ; that is, by making ignorance a 
dark reflector of light for us ; causing them to hit the 
mark of his meaning for us whilst missing it for them- 
selves ; thus we are flattered and they are befooled. 

It is also exceedingly probable that in the previous scene 
of this same act we have another aside which glances at 
my reading of the sonnets, if only for a moment, the 
twinkling of an eye, yet full of merry meaning. 



A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 473 

Mercutio says of Borneo in love, ' Now is lie for the 
numbers Petrarch flowed in : Laura to his lady was but a 
kitchen-wench ; marry, she had a better love (or friend) 
to be-rhyme her.'' Supposing my theory to be the right 
one, the perfection of the banter here — as between Shak- 
speare and Southampton — would lie in an allusion unper- 
ceivecl by the audience, but well known to poet and patron, 
as relating to the sonnets which were then being written. 
This would be no more than his making a public allusion 
to the sonnets, as work in hand, when he dedicated the 
poem of 'Lucrece.' Besides, Shakspeare may be the original 
of Mercutio, (see Ben Jou son's description of his liveli- 
ness !) he may even be playing the part on the stage to 
Burbage's Borneo, and the joke at his own and his friend's 
expence would be greatly heightened by an arch look at 
Southampton sitting on the stage in ; the Lords' places, on 
the very rushes where the Comedy is to dance.' 1 Many 
things would be conveyed to the initiated friends by the 
Poet's humour thus slyly playing bo-peep from behind 
the dramatic mask. 

I have already suggested that the Bosaline of ' Love's 
Labour's Lost,' and the lady of the latter sonnets are 
both drawn from the same original ; the Lady Bich. 
And I believe that to the jealousy of Elizabeth Vernon, 
as pourtrayed in the sonnets, we owe one of the loveliest 
conceptions that ever sprang on wings of splendour 
from the brain of man, the ' Midsummer Wight's Dream ; ' 
dreamed by the potent magician, when he lay down as 
it were apart from the stir and the strife of reality, under 
the boughs of that Athenian wood ; a region full of 
fantasy ! and in the mystic time, and on the borderland 
of life, the fairies came floating to him under the moon- 
light, over the moss, on divers-coloured, dew-besilvered 
plumes, lighting up the leafy coverts with their glow- 
worm lamps, moving about him in tiny attendance, to do 

1 GulVs Handbook. 



474 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

his spiritings as 'they filled the sleeping forest with the 
richness of a dream. 

The play and the bye-play are the very forgery of Jea- 
lousy; the jealousy of mortals mirrored with most exquisite 
mockery in fairy world. 

In the sonnets we have two women wooing one man, 
and in the play two men are made to pursue the love of 
one woman. Puck, speaking of the effect of the flower- 
juice squeezed on the eyes, says, 

6 Then will two at once woo one.' 

Only the parts being reversed, the two that were wooing 
Hermia so passionately, are compelled to follow Helena 
as persistently. The object, too of Oberon's sending for 
the magic flower, was, in its human aspect, to turn a false 
love into true, but by a mistake on the part of Puck, that 
was intentional on the part of the Poet, a true love is sub- 
jected to a false glamour, through the 'misprision' that 
ensues. A sweet Athenian lady is in love with a disdainful 
youth, who has capriciously left her to pursue the 
betrothed of another, and thus gives the leading move- 
ment to the love-fugue. ( Anoint his eyes,' says Oberon , 
that he, in fact, 

6 May be as he was wont to be, 
And see as he was wont to see.' 

And Helena, groping through the glimmering night, half- 
blind with tears, in pursuit of her truant lover, chides al- 
most in the same language as the lady of the sonnets — 

'Fie, Demetrius ! 
Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex ; 
We cannot fight for love as men may do ; 
AVe should be wooed, and were not made to woo.' 

The Poet having written sonnets upon Elizabeth Vernon's 
jealousy of her cousin Lady Eich, found enough reality, 
and no more, in it to play with the subject. So the pain 
and the petulance, the pleadings and reproaches, all passed 



THE TABLES TURNED. 475 

away into this haunted realm of his imagination. He 
drcanied about it, and the fact of the day became the 
fiction of the night ; this being the transfigured shape it 
took in the spirit-world of things — a rainbow of most 
ethereal beauty, that rose up in wonder-land, after the 
April storm of smiles and tears had passed from the face 
of real love, in the human world! — an arch of triumph, 
under which the friends were to pass, on their way into 
the world of wedded life. All fairy-land is lit up for the 
illustration of jealousy, and we have the love-tiffs, fallings- 
out, and makings-up of the Poet's friends, represented in 
the most delicate disguise. 

His fancy has been tickled, and his humour is all alive 
with an elfish sparkle. He will make the wee folk mimic 
the quarrels of these human mortals ; the fairy jealousy 
shall be just theirs, translated to the realm of the quaint 
spirits, who are a masked humanity in miniature. In 
dream-land, too, the Poet can have his own way, and turn 
the tables on the facts of real life. He will play Oberon, 
and use the charmed juice for a 4 fair maid's sake.' The 
lover shall be punished, that was of late so mad for 
Hermia, and have his eyes opened by a truer love-sight, 
and be rejected by Helena, as the breather of false vows. 
The lady that drew all hearts and eyes shall be forsaken 
and left forlorn. In the sonnets, poor Helena has to 
reproach her cousin for stealing her lover from her side ; 
Hermia is there, the ' gentle thief.' In the play this is 
reversed, and Hermia charges Helena for the theft. 

4 me ! you juggler ! you canker-worm ! 
You thief of love ! What ! have you come by night 
And stolen my Love's heart from him ? ' 

Midsummer Night's Dream, act i. sc. 2. 

Many touches tend to show that Hermia is Lady Kich, 
and Helena, Elizabeth Vernon. The complexion of Her- 
mia is again aimed at, in her being called a c raven ; ' 
complexion and spirit both, in the 'tawny Tartar.' The 



476 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

eyes of Stella are likewise distinguishable in ' Hermia's 
sphery eyne,' and in ' your eyes are lodestars ! ' also in 
these lines : 

( Happy is Hermia, wheresoe'er she lies ; 
For she hath blessed and attractive eyes ; 
How came her eyes so bright ? Not with salt tears : 
If so, my eyes are oftener washed than hers. 

Hers too, I think, was the black brow of which we 
have heard so much, the ' brow of Egypt,' in which ' the 
Lover ' could see ' Helen's beauty.' 

The difference in character and in height of person 
agrees with all we know, and can fairly guess, of the two 
cousins. Elizabeth Vernon— Helena — is the taller of the 
two ; she is also the most timid, and, as in the sonnets, 
fearful of her cousin, who 'was a vixen when she went to 
school,' and who is fierce for her size. In the 28th sonnet, 
Elizabeth Vernon is thus addressed : 

6 I tell the Day, to please him thou art bright, 
And dost him grace when clouds do blot the heaven ; 
So flatter I the swart-complexioned Night ; 
When sparkling stars tire not, thou gikVst the even.'' 

In the drama, Lysander exclaims, 

6 Fair Helena, who more engilds the Night, 
Than all the fiery oes and eyes of light ! ' 

Again, in sonnet 109, Southampton says, on the subject 
of his wanderings in the past, and with a special allusion 
to some particular occasion, when the two lovers had 
suffered a 4 night of woe ' — this Play being a Dream of 
that ' Night ' in which the Poet held the lovers to have 
been touched with a Midsummer madness ! — 

6 As easy might I from myself depart, 
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie: 
That is my home of love : if I have ranged, 
Like him that travels, I return again.'' 



THE ' LITTLE WESTERN FLOWER.' 477 

And in the Drama the repentant lover, when the 
glamour has gone from his eyes, says of the lady whom he 
has been following fancy-sick — 

' Lysander keep thy Hermia. I will none : 
If e'er I loved her, all that love is gone. 
My heart to her but as guest-wise sojourned, 
And now to Helen it is home returned. 
There to remain.' 

Lastly, the early and familiar acquaintanceship of the two 
cousins, Lady Eich and Elizabeth Vernon, is perfectly 
pourtrayed in these lines. Helena is expostulating on 
the cruel bearing of Hermia towards her — ■ 

6 0, is it all forgot ? 
All school-days' friendship, childhood-innocence ? 
We, Hermia, like" two artificial gods, 
Have with our needles created both one flower, 
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, 
Both warbling of one song, both in one key, 
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds, 
Had been incorporate. So we grew together, 
Like to a double-cherry, seeming parted, 
But yet an union in partition ; 
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem, 
So with two seeming bodies but one heart.' 

Midsummer Night's Dream, act iii. sc. 2. 

Mr. Halpin, in ' Oberon's Vision, illustrated,' x has con- 
clusively shown the ' little western flower ' of the Alle- 
gory to be the representative of Lettice Knollys, Countess 
of Essex, whom the Earl of Leicester married after he had 
shot his bolt with her Majesty and missed his mark of a 
royal marriage. 2 My reading dovetails with his, to the 

1 Shdkspeare Society's Tapers, 1843. 

2 My interpretation of Oberon's remark — 

' That very time I saw, but thou coulcVst not ' — 
is to this effect:— 

Shakspeare is treating Puck for the moment, as a personification of his 
own boyhood. l Thou rememberest the rare vision we saw at the " Princely 
Pleasures " of Kenilwortli ! ' 'I remember,' replies Puck. So that he was 



478 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

strengthening of both. But, Mr. Halpin does not explain 
why this ' little flower ' should play so important a 
part ; why it should be the chief object and final cause 
of the whole allegory, so that the royal range of the 
imagery is but the mere setting ; why it should be the 
only link of connexion betwixt the allegory and the play. 
This must be because it has more relationship to charac- 
ters in the ' drama ' than to persons out of it. My ren- 
dering alone will show why and how. The allegory was 
introduced on account of these two cousins ; the 'little 
western flower ' being mother to Lady Eich, and aunt to 
Elizabeth Vernon. The Poet pays the Queen a compli- 
ment by the way, but, his allusion to the love-shaft loosed 
so impetuously by Cupid is Only for the sake of marking 
where it fell, and bringing in the Flower. 

It is the little flower alone that is necessary to his 
present purpose, for he is entertaining his 'private 
friends ' more than catering for the amusement of the 
Court. This personal consideration will explain the ten- 
derness of the treatment. Such delicate dealing with 
such a subject was not likely to win the royal favour ; 
the ' imperial votaress ' never forgave the ' little western 
flower ' and only permitted her to come to Court once, 
and then for a private interview, after her Majesty 
learned that Lettice Knollys was really Countess of Lei- 
cester. Shakspeare himself must have had sterner 
thoughts about the lady, but this was not the time to 
show them : he had introduced the subject for poetic 
beauty, not for poetic justice. He brings in his allegory, 
then, on account of those who are related to the ' little 

then present, and saw the sights and all the outer realities of the pageant. 
But the Boy of eleven could not see what Oberon saw, the matrimonial mys- 
teries of Leicester ; the lofty aim of the Earl at a Royal prize, and the secret 
intrigue then pursued by him and the Countess of Essex. Whereupon the 
Fairy King unfolds in Allegory what he before saw in vision, and clothes 
the naked skeleton of fact in the very bloom of beauty, with touches and 
tints delicate as those of Spring, embroidering a grave with flowers. 



LOVE-IN-IDLENESS AND LOVE-IN-EARNEST. 479 

western flower,' and in his use of the flower he is playfully 
tracing np an effect to its natural cause. The mother of 
Lady Eich is typified as the flower called 4 Love-in-Idle- 
ness,' the power of which is so potent that — 

6 The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid. 
Will make a man or woman madly doat 
Upon the next live creature that it sees.' 

And the daughter was like the mother. ' It comes from 
his mother,' said the Queen, with a sigh, speaking of the 
dash of wilful devilry and the Will-o'-the-wisp fire in the 
Earl of Essex's blood ! Shakspeare, in a smiling mood, 
says the very same of Lady Eich and her love-in-idleness. 
6 It comes from her mother !' She, too, was a genuine 
6 light-o'-love ' and possessed the qualities attributed to 
the c little western flower ' — the vicious virtue of its 
juice, the power of glamourie by communicating the 
poison with which Cupid's arrow was touched when 
dipped for deadliest work. 

These she derives by inheritance ; and these she has 
exercised in real life on the lover of her cousin. The 
juice of 'love-in-idleness' has been dropped into South- 
ampton's eyes, and in the play its enchantment has to be 
counteracted. Here I part company with Mr. Halpin. 
4 Dians bud,'' the ' other herb,'' does not represent his 
Elizabeth, the Queen, but my Elizabeth, the ' faire Ver- 
non.' It cannot be made to fit the Queen in any shape. 
If the herb of more potential spell, ' whose liquor hath 
this virtuous property ' that it can correct all errors of 
sight, and ' undo this hateful imperfection ' of the ena- 
moured eyes — 

' Dian's bud, o'er Cupid's flower, 
Hath such force and blessed power.' 

were meant for the Queen ; it would have no application 
whatever in life, and the allegory would not impinge on 
the play. Whose eyes did this virtue of the Queen purge 



480 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

from the grossness of wanton love ? Assuredly not Lei- 
cester's, and as certainly not those of the Lady Lettice. 
Indeed, if these had been so changed, why, their eyes 
could not have ' rolled with wonted sight.' The facts of 
real life would have made the allusion a sarcasm on the 
Queen's virgin force and ' blessed power,' such as would 
have warranted Iago's expression, ' blessed fig's-end /' If 
it be applied to Titania and Lysander, what had the 
Queen to do with them, or they with her ? The allegory 
will not go thus far ; the link is missing that should con- 
nect it with the drama. JSTo. ' Dian's bud ' is not the 
Queen. It is the emblem of Elizabeth Vernon's true love 
and its virtue in restoring the ' precious seeing ' to her 
lover's eyes which had in the human world been doating 
wrongly. It symbols the triumph of love-in-earnest over 
love-in-idleness ; the influence of that purity which is 
here represented as the offspring of Dian. 

Only thus can we find that meeting-point of Queen 
and Countess, of Cupid's liower and Dian's bud, in the 
play which is absolutely essential to the existence and the 
oneness of the work ; only thus can we connect the cause 
of the mischief with its cure. The allusion to the Queen 
was but a passing compliment ; the influence of the 'little 
western flower ' and its necessary connection with persons 
in the drama are as much the sine quel non of the play's 
continuity and development as was the jealousy of Eliza- 
beth Vernon a motive-incident in the poetic creation. 

Such, I believe, is the Genesis of this exquisite Dramatic 
Dream ; the little grub of fact out of which the wonder rose 
on rainbow wings ; an instance of the way in which 
Shakspeare effected his marvellous transformations and 
made the mortal put on immortality. For a moment we 
have caught the wizard at his work and seen how he at- 
tained that remoteness when dealing with familiar things 
which can invest mere earth, so common to us in its near- 
ness, with a lustre in the distance as of a lighted star. 



LADY RICH AS CLEOPATRA. 481 

I do not doubt that this dainty drama was written with 
the view of celebrating the marriage of Southampton and 
Elizabeth Vernon ; for them his Muse put on the wed- 
ding raiment of such richness ; theirs was the bickering of 
jealousy so magically mirrored, the nuptial path so be- 
strewn with the choicest of our Poet's flowers, the wed- 
ding bond that he so fervently blest m fairy guise. He is, 
as it were, the familiar friend at the marriage-feast who 
gossips cheerily to the company of a perplexing passage 
in the lovers' courtship, which they can afford to smile at 
now! 

The play was probably composed some time before 
the marriage took place, at a period when it may have been 
thought the Queen's consent could be obtained, but not 
so early as the commentators have imagined. I have 
ventured the date of 1595. x 

'Of all Shakspeare's historical plays,' says Coleridge, 
' " Antony and Cleopatra " is the most wonderful. Not 
one in which he has followed history so minutely, and 
yet there are few in which he impresses the notion of 
angelic strength so much — perhaps none in which he im- 
presses it more strongly. This is greatly owing to the 
manner in which the fiery force is sustained throughout, 
owing to the numerous momentary flashes of nature coun- 
teracting the historic abstraction.' 

There were reasons for this vivid look of life and 
warmth of colour unknown to Coleridge. It is not merely 

1 Perhaps it was one of the Plays presented before Mr. Secretary Cecil 
and Lord Southampton, when they were leaving London for Paris, in Ja- 
nuary, 1598, at which time, as Rowland White relates, the Earl's marriage 
was secretly talked of. The same writer tells us, that on the 14th of the 
next month, there was a grand entertainment given at Essex House. There 
were present, the Ladies Leicester, Northumberland, Bedford, Essex, and 
Rich; also Lords Essex, Rutland, Mountjoy, and others. 'They had two 
Plays, which kept them up till One o'clock after Midnight.' {Sidney 
Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 91)- Southampton was away, hut this brings us upon 
the group of l Private Friends ' gathered, in all likelihood, to witness a pri- 
vate performance of two of our Poet's Plays. 

I I 



482 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

life-like, but real life itself. The model from which 
Shakspeare drew his Cleopatra was, like his statue of 
Hermione, a very real woman all a-thrill with life : ' The 
fixure of her eye hath motion in't !' Eipe life is ruddy 
on the lip ; life stirs in the breath. A little closer, and 
we exclaim with Leonatus, ' Oh ; she's warm /' 

There was a woman in the North, whom Shakspeare 
had known, quite ready to become his life -figure, for this 
siren of the east ; her name was Lady Eich. A few 
touches to make the hair dark, and give the cheek a browner 
tint, and the change was wrought. The soul was already 
there, apparelled in befitting bodily splendour. She had 
the tropical exuberance, the rich passionate life, and 
reckless impetuous spirit ; the towering audacity of will, 
and breakings-out of wilfulness ; the sudden change 
from stillness to storm, from storm to calm, which kept 
her life in billowy motion, on which her spirit loved 
to ride triumphing, although others went to wreck ; 
the cunning — past man's thought — to play as she pleased 
upon man's pulses ; the infinite variety that custom could 
not stale ; the freshness of feeling that age could not 
wither ; the magic to turn the heads of young and old, 
the wanton and the wise ! Her ' flashes of nature ? were 
lightning-flashes ! A fitting type for the witch- woman, 
who kissed away kingdoms, and melted down those im- 
mortal pearls of price — the souls of men — to enrich the 
wine of her luxurious life ! The very ' model for the devil 
to build mischief on,' or for Shakspeare to work by, when 
setting that ' historic abstraction' all aglow with a confla- 
gration of passionate life, and making old Nile's swart 
image of beauty in bronze breathe in flesh and blood and 
sensuous shape once more to personify eternal torment 
in the most pleasurable guise. The hand of the English- 
woman flashes its whiteness, too, in witness, when she 
offers to. give her 'bluest veins to kiss,' forgetful that 
it was black with ' Phcebus' amorous pinches.' The 



ESSEX AS HAMLET. 483 

•ivioiis Grace, in whom all ill well shows.' Sonnet 40, 
(p. 210), is that ' serpent of old Nile,' who was ' cunning, 
past man's thought;' she who is asked in sonnet 150, 
(p. 377)- 

6 Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill 
That in the very refuse of thy deeds, 
There is such strength and warrantise of skill 
That in my mind thy worst all best exceeds ? ' 

is the same person, of whom it is said in the tragedy, 
'the vilest things become themselves in her;' the lady 
addressed in sonnet 96, (p. 370) — 

( Thou mak'st faults graces that to thee resort, 
As on the finger of a throned Queen, 
The basest jewel will be well-esteemed ; 
So are those errors that in thee are seen 
To truths translated, and for true things deemed— 

is one with the 

( Wrangling Queen, 
Whom everything becomes, to chide, to laugh, 
To weep : whose every passion fully strives 
To make itself, in thee, fair, and admired ! ' 

This veri-simihtude is not casual, it comes from no in- 
advertence of expression, but goes to the life-roots of a 
personal character, so unique, that the Poet on various 
occasions drew from one original — the Lady Eich. 

In the same way I think Shakspeare wrought from the 
character of Lady Rich's brother, in creating one of his 
most perplexing personages. The puzzle of history, called 
' Essex,' was well calculated to become that problem of 
the critic, called 'Hamlet.' This has been before sug- 
gested. 1 The characters and circumstances of both have 
much in common, The father of Essex was popularly 

1 In ( Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne. 1 
ii 2 



484 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

believed to have been poisoned by the man who after- 
wards married the widow. Then the burden of action 
imposed on a nature divided against itself, the restlessness 
of spirit, the wayward melancholy, the fantastic sadness,, 
the disposition to look on life as a sucked orange, — all point 
to such a possibility. We can match Hamlet's shifting 
moods of mind with those of the ' weary knight,' heart- 
sore and fancy-sick, as revealed in letters to his sister, 
Lady Eich. In one of these he writes — 

* This lady hath entreated me to write a fantastical .... 
but I am so ill with my pains, and some other secret causes, as 
I will rather choose to dispraise those affections with which 
none but women apes and lovers are delighted. To hope for 
that which I have not, is a vain expectation, to delight in that 
which I have, is a deceiving pleasure : to wish the return of that 
which is gone from me, is womanish inconstancy. Those 
things which fly me I will not lose labour to follow. Those 
that meet me I esteem as they are worth, and leave when they 
are nought worth. I will neither brag of my good-hap nor 
complain of my ill ; for secrecy makes joys more sweet, and I 
am then most unhappy, when another knows that I am un- 
happy. I do not envy, because I will do no man that honour 
to think he hath that which I want ; nor yet am I not con- 
tented, because I know some things that I have not. Love, I 
confess to be a blind god. Ambition, fit for hearts that already 
confess themselves to be base. Envy is the humour of him 
that will be glad of the reversion of another man's fortune ; and 
revenge the remedy of such fools as in injuries, know not how 
to keep themselves aforehand. Jealous I am not, for I will be 
glad to lose that which I am not sure to keep. If to be of this 
mind be to be fantastical, then join me with the three that I 
first reckoned, but if they be young and handsome, with the 
first. 

Your brother that loves you dearly.' l 

Again he writes to his ' dear sister : ' 

4 1 am melancholy-merry ; sometimes happy, and often dis- 
contented. The Court is of as many humours as the rainbow 
1 Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne, vol. i. p. 299, 



LIKENESS OF ESSEX TO HAMLET. 485 

hath colours. The time wherein we live is more inconstant 
than woman's thoughts, more miserable than old age itself, and 
breedeth both people and occasions like itself, that is, violent, 
desperate, and fantastical. Myself, for wondering at other 
men's strange adventures, have not leisure to follow the 
ways of mine own heart, but by still resolving not to be proud of 
any good that can come, because it is but the favour of chance ; 
nor do I throw down my mind a whit for any ill that shall 
happen, because I see that all fortunes are good or evil as they 
are esteemed.' l 

These read exactly like expressions of Hamlet's weari- 
ness, indifference and doubt, as for example, this sighing 
utterance, ' How weary, flat, stale and unprofitable, seem 
to me all the uses of this world ! ' And this : 

c Indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this 
goodly frame, the earth, seems to me as a sterile promontory, 
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'er- 
hanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire ; 
why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent 
congregation of vapours .... Man delights not me ; no 
nor woman neither.' 

There is the same worm at the root, the same fatal 
fracture running through the character, the same vacci- 
lation and glancing aside the mark, that tendency to zig- 
zag which made Coleridge swerve from side to side of his 
walk in the Garden, because he never could make up his 
mind to go direct. It strikes me that the subject of 
4 Hamlet ' was forced on Shakspeare as a curious study 
from the life of his own time, rather than chosen from a 
rude remote age for its dramatic aptitude. For the 
character is undramatic in its very nature ; a passive, 
contemplative part, rather than an acting one. It has 
no native hue of Norse resolution, but is sicklied over 
with the ' pale cast ' of modern thought. As with 
Essex, the life is hollow at heart ; dramatic only in 

1 Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne, vol. i. p. 297, 



436 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

externals It is tragic permissively, not compulsorily. 
The Drama does not solve any riddle of life for us, it is 
the represented riddle of a life that to this day remains 
unread. Doubtless, it would be the death of many fine- 
spun theories and rare subtleties of insight regarding 
Shakspeare's intentions, if we could only see how contented 
he was to let Nature have her way, and trusted the 
realities which she had provided ; steadily keeping to his 
terra jirma, and letting his followers seek after him all 
through cloudland. 

When the Poet put these words into the mouth of 
Ophelia — 4 Bonnie Sweet Eobin is all my joy,' they did 
not mean, I think, to refer merely to the tune of that 
name. ' Sweet Eobin ' was the pet name by which the 
Mother of Essex addressed him in her letters. One 
wonders whether either of the Court ladies — Elizabeth 
Southwell, Mary Howard, Mrs. Eussell, or the ' fairest 
Bryclges' — whose names have been coupled with that of 
Essex, gave any hint of 4 Ophelia ' to Shakspeare ? 

There is no likeness, however, betwixt Horatio and the 
Earl of Southampton ; the philosophic calm of the one is 
totally opposed to the other's natural fervency of tem- 
perament, and the dear friend of Essex cannot possibly 
be one with the friend of Hamlet. The Prince's descrip- 
tion of Horatio determines that ! 

6 Thou hast been 
As one in suffering all, that suffers nothing ; 
A Man, that Fortune's buffets and rewards 
Hast ta'en with equal thanks ! 

And blest are those 
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled 
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger, 
To sound what stop she please.' 

Malone supposed that our Poet, in writing the last 
words of Horatio — 



ESSEX'S LAST PRAYER. 



487 



* Now cracks a noble heart — good night, sweet prince, 
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest ! ' 

had in mind the last words of Essex in his prayer on the 
scaffold — fe And when my soul and body shall part, send 
thy blessed angels, to be near unto me, which may convey 
it to the joys of heaven.' 

But ' Hamlet ' is a somewhat earlier play than Malone 
supposed. It must have been the last words of Horatio 
that were in the last thoughts of Essex, or else they were 
so familiar to him for personal reasons, as to shape his 
last expressions unconsciously to himself. 

It is in the play of King Henry VIII. that we may 
find the last words of Essex worked up by the dramatist, 
and with great fulness of detail. The speech of Bucking- 
ham on his way to execution, includes almost every 
point of Essex's address on the scaffold, as may be seen 
by the following comparison. 



Essex. 
* I pray you all to pray with 
me and for me.' 



Buckingham. 

i All good people pray for 
me.' 



Essex. 
4 1 beseech you and the 
world to have a charitable 
opinion of me, for my inten- 
tion towards her Majesty, 
whose death, upon my salva- 
tion, and before God, I protest 
I never meant, nor violence to 
her person.' 



Buckingham. 
I have this day received a 

Traitor's judgment, 
And by that name must 
die : yet heaven bear wit- 
ness ; 
And, if I have a conscience, 

let it sink me, 
Even as the axe falls, if I 
be not faithful.' 



Essex. 
'Yet I confess I have re- 
ceived an honourable trial, and 
am justly condemned.' 



Buckingham. 
4 1 had my trial, and must 
needs sav a noble one.' 



488 



SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 



Essex. 
' I beseech you all to join 
yourselves with me in prayer, 
not with eyes and lips only, 
but with lifted up hearts and 
minds to the Lord for me . . 
Grod, grant me the inward 
comfort of Thy Spirit. Lift 
my soul above all earthly 
cogitations, and when my soul 
and body shall part, send Thy 
blessed angels to be near unto 
me, which may convey it to 
the joys of heaven.' 



Essex. 
e I desire all the world to 
forgive me, even as I do freely 
and from my heart forgive all 
the world.' 

Essex. 
'The Lord grant her Ma- 
jesty a prosperous reign, and a 
long, if it be his will. O Lord, 
grant her a wise and under- 
standing head ! Lord, bless 
Her!' 



Buckingham. 
6 You few that loved me, 

And dare be bold to weep 
for Buckingham, 

His noble friends and fel- 
lows, whom to leave 

Is only bitter to him ; the 
only dying ; 

Gro with me like good angels 
to the end; 

And as the long divorce of 
steel falls on me, 

Make of your prayers one 
sweet sacrifice, 

And lift my soul to heaven.' 

Buckingham. 
' I as free forgive you, 
As I would be forgiven : I 
forgive all.' 

Buckingham. 

6 Commend me to his grace. 

My vows and prayers 

Yet are the King's ; and, till 
my soul forsake, 

Shall cry for blessings on 
him ! may he live, 

Longer than I have time to 
tell his years ! 

Ever beloved and loving- 
may his rule be.' 



Even so did he who held that the players were the 
' abstract and brief chronicles of the time,' and that the 
dramatist should show the ' very age and body of the 
time, its form and pressure,' deal with the realities around 
him ; the men whom he knew, the scenes which he saw, 
the events as they occurred ; although these, when seen 



THE COMPARISON CONTINUED. 489 

through the luminous ether of his poetry, and heard in 
his larger utterance, are often so changed in their 
translated shape, that they are as difficult to identify as it 
may be to recognise in another world many glorified 
spirits that once dwelt obscure and dim in this. Also the 
personages live so intensely in his Poetry, who have only 
come to us as phantoms in history, that it is no marvel 
we should have lost their likeness. In the present 
instance, the identification of the fact in the fiction is 
easy, for not only has the Poet used the thoughts and ex- 
pressions of Essex and dramatised his death-scene, but he 
has also rendered the very incidents of Essex's trial, his 
bearing before his Peers, and given an estimate of 
persons and circumstances exact in application. 

First Gent. ' To his accusations 
He pleaded still not guilty, and alleged 
Many sharp reasons to defeat the law. 
The King's Attorney on the contrary, 
Urged on the examinations, proofs, confessions 
Of divers witnesses ; which the Duke desired 
To have brought viva voce to his face : 
At which appeared against him his surveyor ; 
Sir Gilbert Peck, his chancellor ; and John Carr, 
Confessor to him ; with that devil-monk, 
Hopkins, that made this mischief.' 

Second Gent. ' That was he 
That fed him with his prophecies ? ' 

First Gent < The same.' 

Here is obvious reference to the brutal vehemence of 
Coke, the Attorney-General, to the private examinations 
of the confederates, whose depositions were taken the 
day before the trial of Essex and Southampton ; to the 
confession of Sir Christopher Blount, who had been Essex's 
right-hand man in his fatal affair ; to the treachery of 
Mr. Ashton, Essex's confessor ; and a most marked and 
underlined allusion to Cuffe, the Jesuitical plotter of 



490 SHAKSPE ARE'S SONNETS. 

treason, the chief instigator and evil tempter of Essex ; 
the man that ' made this mischief.' 

A closer scrutiny would yield further proof, that in this 
scene our Poet was working directly from the life of his 
own time. The lines — 

' Nor will I sue, altho' the king have mercies, 
More than I dare make faults — ' 

give utterance to a prominent fact in Essex's case. And 
the allusions to the Irish Deputyship and the ' trick of 
state,' which was G a deep envious one,' most probably 
have personal application to Essex, and Mountjoy, and 
possibly to Cecil. 

For myself, I feel half ashamed to be decomposing 
Shakspeare's poetry in this way ; taking the instrument 
in pieces to see whence the music came. It looks like 
filching a light for the purpose of playing the detective's 
part. And yet, every touch of his personal relation- 
ships, and every authentic footprint are precious to 
me and important to my subject. Also, this identifica- 
tion unites with the other internal evidence in proof that 
' King Henry VIII.' was written during the life of 
Elizabeth. The fate of Essex must have profoundly 
affected Shakspeare, and I feel that it was yet fresh in 
his memory when he wrote the ' Prologue,' with its 
iteration of the truth of the scenes represented. The play 
was composed quite in time to be that ' Enterlude of 
King Henry VIII.' which was entered in the Stationers' 
Books under date Feb. 12th, 1604-5 ; but not performed, 
I think, until after the accession of James. The allusions 
to him and the glories of his reign, I hold to be an after- 
thought, interpolated to meet the players' exigency. But 
surely not by Shakspeare ? How could his dramatic 
instinct have tolerated the proclamation of James as 
Elizabeth's heir in a Prophecy ? 



491 



THE MAN SHAKSPEARE 



KE-TOUCHED PORTRAIT. 



>^< 



In retelling an old story, my plea is that I adduce fresh 
evidence ; novel facts ; and bring new witnesses into the 
Court of Criticism. We are now able for the first time to 
see round the character of Shakspeare in its completeness, 
without misgivings respecting those back slums of his 
London life, in which he has been supposed to have got 
so sadly bemired. We no longer need fear lest he should 
have cast and fixed a black shadow of himself as his sole 
personal portrait bequeathed to us. We can look him 
full in the face in clear honest daylight, untroubled 
by the moody mists and fantastic shadows, and bat-like 
suspicions that have so long haunted the twilight uncer- 
tainty, to learn at last that our man of men who seemed 
something more than human in his wisdom of life was not 
miserably unwise in his own life ; did not wantonly 
profane the beauty of his work, nor wilfully flaw and 
stain one of our loftiest statues of humanity. Once for 
all we are now able to silence those who fancied that 
they had gotten on the blind side of the great seer, and, 
at least, caught the god ' kissing carrion,' whilst on his 
visit to our earth. 

Three hundred years have passed by since the little 



492 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

child opened its eyes on the low ceiling and bare walls of 
the poor birth-place at Stratford-on-Avon, to grow up 
into that immortal god-send of a man whom we call 
William Shakspeare. In all this long procession of years 
we meet with no other such face looking out on us ; 
the eyes rainy or sunny with the tears and laughters of 
all time ! No other such genius has come to trans- 
figure English literature. All this while the world has 
been getting hints of what the man Shakspeare was, 
and how infinitely wonderful and precious was the 
work he did; how richly ennobling to us was the 
legacy of his name ! Innumerable writers have thrown 
what light they could upon his page to help the 
world on its way ; but, as Coleridge says, no compre- 
hension has yet been able to draw the line of circum- 
scription round this mighty mind so as to say to itself 
1 I have seen the whole.' And, how few of all 
who read his works, or continually repeat his name, 
have any adequate or even shapeable conception of the 
man ! He who, of all poets, comes nearest home to us 
with his myriad touches of nature, is the most remote 
in his own personality. We only reach him figuratively 
at best. We think of him as the chief star of the 
Elizabethan group, large and luminous above the rest ; 
but we do not get at the man in that way, however we 
may stand on tiptoe with longing, having no glass to 
draw the planet Shakspeare sufficiently close to us, so 
that we might make out the human features amid the 
dazzle of his glory, and see his ' visage in his mind.' We 
know that somewhere at the centre sits the spirit of all 
this brightness, however veiled in light. Throbs of real 
mortal life, pulses of pleasure and pain, first made the 
light with their motion, and still shoot forth every sparkle 
of splendour — every evanescence of lovely colour — every 
gleam of grace. Shakspeare's own life — Shakspeare him- 
self — is at the heart of it all ! Although a miracle of a 



THE ENGLAND OF HIS TIME. 493 

man, and, as a creative artist, just the nearest to an 
earthly representative of that Creator who is everywhere 
felt in His works, nowhere visible ; yet he was a man, 
and one of the most intensely human that ever walked 
our world. And it is my present purpose to try briefly 
to get at the man himself, and make out his features so 
far as our means will allow, by extracting what spirit of 
Shakspeare we can from his works, taking advantage of 
the fresh facts to be derived from this reading of the 
sonnets, and clothing that spirit as best we may : a grain 
of human colour, a touch of real life being of more value 
for my purpose than all the husks of Antiquarianism. 

That Spanish Emperor who fancied he could have 
improved the plan of creation if he had been consulted, 
would hardly have managed to better the time, and place, 
and circumstances of Shakspeare's birth. The world 
could not have been more ripe, or England more ready — 
the stage of the national life more nobly peopled — the 
scenes more fittingly draped — than they were for his 
reception. It was a time when souls were made in 
earnest, and life grew quick within and large without. 
The full-statured spirit of the nation had just found its 
sea-legs and was clothing itself with wings. Shakspeare's 
starting-place for his victorious career was the fine 
vantage ground which England had won when she had 
broken the strength of the Spaniard, burst the girdle they 
had sought to put round her, and sat enthroned higher 
than ever in her sea-sovereignty — breathing an ampler 
air of liberty, strong in the sense of a lustier life, and glad 
in the great dawn of a future new and limitless. 

Into a mixed, multiform, many-coloured world was 
William Shakspeare born, three hundred years ago. Old 
times and an old faith had been passing away, like the 
leaves of autumn wearing their richest colours, and every 
rent of old ruin was the rift of a new life. England was 
picturesque to look on in her changing tints, as is 



494 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

the woodland at the turn of the year, when winter still 
lingers in the bare dark boughs above, and the young- 
spring comes up in a burst of song and a mist of tender 
green below. In the year of our Poet's birth we learn 
that the sum of two shillings was paid by the Corporation 
of Stratford for defacing an image of the ancient faith in 
the chapel. The fires of Smithfield had but recently 
smouldered down, leaving a smoke in the souls of 
Englishmen that should yet burst into a flame of noble 
spiritual life, and fierce in their minds was the memory 
of ' Bloody Mary.' The stage of political life was 
crowded with magnificent men and women, heroes and 
poets, statesmen and sea-kings ; men who, like Drake, 
won their victories with such a dash, and others who, 
like Sidney, won their glory with such a grace. A rare 
group it was that gathered round Elizabeth and spread 
their sumptuous braveries in her presence, as in the very 
sun of pageantry. The citizens of London were yet 
accustomed to go forth on a May-morning to gather 
hawthorn-bloom in the village of Charing, and the prim- 
roses grew where the Nelson Monument is planted, if not 
growing, now. Coaches were apt to break down or stick 
in the deep ruts of rural Drury Lane. In country places 
like Stratford the old times lingered and the old customs 
clung. The Cucking-stOol was still used as a warning to 
wives of a termagant tongue. Apprentices and servants 
who stayed out of their masters' houses after nine o'clock 
at night were liable to be fined twenty shillings, and have 
three nights and three days in the open stocks. Brewers 
were legally compelled to brew a good and wholesome 
4 small drink ' for a halfpenny a gallon ; but no one was 
allowed to be a ' Typlar ' unless appointed by the king's 
justices. Troops of strolling players had now taken the 
place of the wandering friars of old, and won a warmer 
welcome up and down the country-side. And in the 
midst of this time of change, of stirring life, of hopeful 



OUR POET'S CHILDHOOD. 495 

things, when the eager national spirit stood on the very 
threshold of expectation, our Shakspeare was born, lite- 
rally in the heart of England. 

Nearness to Nature we may look on as the great 
desideratum for the nurture of a national poet, and this 
was secured to Shakspeare. He came of good healthy 
yeoman blood, he belonged to a race that has always 
been heartily national, and clung to their bit of soil from 
generation to generation — ploughed a good deal of their 
life into it, and fought for it, too, in the day of their 
country's need. No doubt Nature stores up much health 
and freshness of feeling, love of green things, and songs 
of birds and quiet appreciation of all out-of-door sights 
and sounds in men like these — carefully hoarding it until 
one day it all finds expression, and the long and slowly- 
gathered result breaks into immortal flower, when, in the 
fulness of time, the Burns or Shakspeare is born. 

We know but little of the childhood of our greatest 
Englishman. Curiously enough, whilst seeking for the 
facts of his early life, we find it recorded, as if in smiling 
mockery of our endeavours, that in the year 1558 the 
father of Shakspeare was fined fourpence for not keeping 
his gutters clean. We learn that in the year 1552 he was 
certainly doing business as a glover, and in 1556 he 
brought an action against Henry Field for unjustly 
detaining eighteen quarters of barley, which looks as 
though he were then a maltster or farmer. In 1565 he was 
chosen an alderman; in 1569 he was high-bailiff; and 
in 1571-2 chief alderman. In 1579 he is styled a 
yeoman. He was in pretty good circumstances when the 
Poet was born, having a small landed estate near 
Stratford and some property in the town. It appears as 
though he met with a great and sudden reverse of fortune 
about the year 1578, whereby he became no longer 
worshipful ; what or how we are unable to conjecture. 
In 1587 we find him in prison for debt, and in 1592 his 



496 SHARSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

name is in a list of persons who are supposed to stay- 
away from church through fear of a process of debt. 

It is pleasant to know that Shakspeare could have 
his fair share of a mother's tenderness, and was not 
compelled too early to fall into the ranks by his father's 
side and fight the grim battle against poverty, with 
childhood's small hands and weary feet. 

When the boy Shakspeare was five years of age, his 
father, as high-bailiff, entertained the players. This is the 
earliest notice we have of theatrical performances in the 
town. And in all likelihood the child caught his first 
glimpse in the Stratford Guildhall of that fairy realm in 
which he was to become the mightiest magician that ever 
waved the enchanter's wand, and, as the trumpet sounded 
for the third time and the dramatic vision was unveiled, we 
may imagine how the yearnings of a new life stirred within 
him, and he would be dreamingly drawn toward those 
rare creatures that seemed to have no touch of common 
earthiness as they walked so radiant in such a world of 
wonder. It would be an event, indeed — that first sight of 
the Players ! 

In the summer of 1575, when Shakspeare was eleven 
years of age, there were brave doings and princely 
pageants at Kenilworth, where the Earl of Leicester gave 
royal entertainment to Queen Elizabeth. The superb affair 
was continued eighteen days. That Shakspeare was 
there is beyond any reasonable doubt, and a vision of its 
' princely pleasures ' and pyrotechnic displays rises on his 
memory in the ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' This we 
know is his way of telling us many facts of his own life ! 

When our Poet was sixteen years of age there was a 
William Shakspeare drowned in the Avon, near Stratford. 
How impossible to sum the difference to the world, to 
human thought, had it been our William Shakspeare ! 

He was in all likelihood educated at the Free-school so 
long as the father could spare him from work. Possibly 



FATHER AND SOX. 497 

he may have become what we should now call a pupil- 
teacher, and this have given rise to the tradition that 
Shakspeare was once a country schoolmaster. We cannot 
infer what he was from what he knew, for he seems to 
have known everything. But we do not doubt that he 
helped his father in his business, and that sorry mixture 
probably included looking after sheep on the bit of land 
they possessed or hired, killing the sheep and selling the 
meat, dealing in the wool that grew on the sheep and in 
the gloves made from the wool. Labour was not so 
minutely divided in those days as it now is, besides 
which, we know how men in the circumstances of Shak- 
speare's father will try to live by a multiplicity of means 
in*a small way, and grasp at any chance of staying the 
down-hill tendency. 

One feels that there is a considerable basis of truth in 
the traditions which have reached us, telling that the 
young Shakspeare was somewhat wild, and joined with 
other young fellows and let his spirits overflow at times in 
their boisterous country way. Hence we hear of the drink- 
ing bouts and poaching freaks. We may depend on it 
there was nothing prim and priggish about Willie Shak- 
speare ; for 'Willie' he would be to his youthful compa- 
nions as well as to his ' play-fellows ' of later days ! He 
must have been a fine youth. And if he had anything 
like the physique that glows through the ' Venus and 
Adonis ' there must also have been wild leaps of ebulliant 
blood, difficult to repress, and the youth, with all his 
powers at play, in the lustihood of animal spirits — the 
senses hungry with an out-of-door zest, and few refining 
influences at work about him, may have broken out of 
bounds. If the sedate Goethe with his stately reserves of 
ripened age had his unrestful youth and frolic devilries, 
Shakspeare may surely be accredited with his extrava- 
gances and runnings riot, before the buoyant air-bubbling 
nature was calmed and crystallized into its noble man- 

k k 



493 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

hood. Not that there was any great harm in his frolics, 
only they may have been too expensive for the father's 
position. He may not have been able to afford what the 
youth was spending with a lavish hand. Possibly he kept 
the worst as long as he could from his son's knowledge. 
Suddenly there came a change. The young man looked on 
life with more serious eyes. He would see his father, as 
it were, coming down the hill, beaten and broken-spirited, 
as he was mounting full of hope and exulting vigour. 
He would have sad thoughts, such as gradually steadied 
the wild spirits within him, and make resolves that we 
know he fulfilled as soon as possible in after-life. Gentle 
Willie would not be without self-reproach if he was 
in the least a cause of his father's declining fortunes. This 
thought we may surmise was one of the strongest incen- 
tives to that prudence which became proverbial in after- 
years, and one of the quickest feelings working within 
him, as he strove so strenuously to make his father a gen- 
tleman, was that he had once helped to make him poor. It 
may be a worthless fancy, but I cannot help thinking that 
our Poet's great thrift and his undoubted grip in money 
matters had such an unselfish awakenment. 

Another fixed belief of mine is that the youth and the 
4 fickle maid' of the ' Lover's Complaint ' are none other 
than William Shakspeare and Anne Hathaway. In this 
poem the Poet is, I think, making fun of their own early 
troubles. There is a pleasant exaggeration throughout both 
in his description of her, and her description of him. The 
humour is very pawky. Some people, he suggests, might 
have thought her old in her ancient large straw -bonnet, or 
hat. But he assures us, Time had not cut down all that 
youth began, nor had youth quite left her ; some of her 
beauty yet peeped through the lattice of age ! The 
lady is anxious for us to think that she is old in sorrow, 
not in years. The description of him is pointed by 
the author with the most provoking slyness, and used 



PORTKAIT OF YOUNG WILL. SHAKSPEARE. 499 

in her defence for the loss of her ' white stole.' l I 
entertain not the slightest doubt that we have here 
the most life-like portrait of Shakspeare extant, drawn 
by himself under the freest, happiest condition for en- 
suring a true likeness — that is, whilst humourously 
pretending to look at himself through the eyes of Anne 
Hathaway, under circumstances the most sentimental. 
A more perfect or beautiful portrait was never finished. 
The frolic life looks out of the eyes, the red is ripe 
on the cheek, the maiden manhood soft on the chin, 
the breath moist on the lip that has the glow of the garnet, 
the bonny smile that ' gilded his deceit ' so bewitchingly. 
He is — 

6 One by nature's outwards so commended, 
That maiden eyes stuck over all his face ; 
Love lacked a dwelling and made him her place, 
And when in his fair parts she did abide, 
She was new-lodged and newly Deified. 

' His browny locks did hang in crooked curls, 
And every light occasion of the wind 
Upon his lips their silken parcel hurls ; 
Each eye that saw him did enchant the mind, 
For on his visage was in little drawn, 
What largeness thinks in Paradise was sawn. 

6 Small show of man was yet upon his chin ; 
His phcenix-down began but to appear, 
Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin, 
Whose bare out-bragged the web it seemed to wear, 
Yet showed his visage by that cost more dear ; 
And nice affection wavering, stood in doubt, 
If best were as it was, or best without.' 

The very hah", in shape and hue, that Shakspeare must 
have had when young, to judge by the bust and the de- 
scription of it as left, coloured from life ! The inner man, 

1 There is the subtle Shakspearian smile at human nature's frailties in 
the suggestion of stanza 23, that in like circumstances we seldom let the by- 
past perils of others stand in our future way. 

K K 2 



500 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

too, was beauteous as the outer : gentle until greatly 
moved, and then his spirit was a storm personified — but 
only such a storm 

( As oft twixt May and April is to see, 
When winds breathe sweet, unruly though they be.'' 

He was universally beloved, and then, what a winning 
tongue he had ! — 

( So on the tip of his subduing tongue, 
All kinds of arguments and questions deep, 
All replication prompt and reason strong, 
For his advantage still did wake and sleep, 
To make the weeper laugh, the laugher weep.' 

And he was such an actor too ! — ■ 

6 He had the dialect and different skill, 
Catching all passions in his craft at will ; 
In him a plenitude of subtle matter, 
Applied to Cautills, all strange forms receives, 
Of burning blushes, or of weeping water, 
Or swooning paleness ; and he takes and leaves, 
In either's aptness, as it best deceives, 
To blush at speeches rank, to weep at woes, 
Or to turn white and swoon at tragic shows.' 

And to think 

' What a hell of witchcraft lay 
In the small orb of one particular tear ' 

when wept by him ! Poor Anne ! No marvel that 

' My woeful self — 
What with his Art in Youth, and Youth in art — 
Threw my affections in his charmed power ; 
Keserved the stalk, and gave him all the flower.' ' 

We learn by the 16th stanza that he was also a capital 

1 Tims prettily anticipating an illustration in Burns' ' Bonny Boon ! ' 



HIS FROLIC HUMOUR. 501 

rider ; much admired when he followed the hounds across 
country with a daring dash, or came cantering over to 
Shottery with a lover's sideling grace. 

Who can doubt that this is ' Will. Shakspeare,' the 
handsome young fellow of splendid capacity, so shaped 
and graced by nature as to play the very devil with the 
hearts of the Warwickshire lasses? The poem is founded 
on a circumstance that preceded the marriage of the Poet 
and Anne Hathaway ; the ' lover ' being one who hath 
wept away a jewel in her tears, and who is described as 
older than her sweetheart. His own gifts and graces are 
purposely made the most of in humouring the necessities of 
poor Anne's case — the helplessness of his own. These 
things which she points to in extenuation also serve him for 
excuse, as if he said, ' being so handsome and so clever, 
how can I help being so beloved and run after ? You see, 
it is not my fault ! ' This smiling mood has given free play 
to his pencil, and the poem brings us nearer to the radiant 
personal humour of the man, I believe, than all his plays, 
especially that story of the Nun — 

His ' parts had power to charm a sacred Nun ' — 

a lady whose beauty made the young nobles of the Court 
dote on her, who was wooed by the loftiest in the land 
but kept them all at distance, and retired into a nunnery, 
to ' spend her living in eternal love.' Yet, pardon him 
for telling it ; he confesses the fact with an im-' pudency 
so rosy ! ' No sooner had she set eyes on him, by accident, 
than she too fell in love. In a moment had ' religious love 
put out religion's eye.' I think this a glorious outbreak 
of his spirit of fun ! 

If I am right then in my conjecture that ' gentle Willie' 
was the beguiling lover of this forlorn lady of the ' Com- 
plaint,' we shall find a remark of his to the point on which 
I have touched. In reply to some of the charges brought 
against him, he says, 



502 SHAKSPE ABE'S SONNETS. 

6 All my offences that abroad you see, 

Are errors of the blood ; none of the mincV 

When he wanted four months of nineteen years of age, 
Shakspeare was married to Anne Hathaway, the daughter 
of a yeoman, at Shottery. We read that Eve was formed 
from one of Adam's ribs, taken from him during a deep 
sleep. And it has been suspected that our gentle Willie's 
Eve was formed for him by the hand of Love during a 
deep sleep of the soul ; that he threw the hues of his young 
imagination round her, and got married before he well 
knew where he was. There is not much however to give 
countenance or colour to the theory, which has sprung 
from reading the sonnets as true to the Poet's own per- 
sonal experience. Certainly she was getting on for eight 
years older than himself, and he has in his works left a 
warning to others against their doing as he did. 1 But 

1 At least so say the Critics. Though it would be difficult to find any sign of 
Shakspeare's own personality in the words. Mr. Grant White, in his recent 
work, cannot forgive Anne Hathaway for marrying Shakspeare. He thinks 
the second-best bed too good for her, and if he could have had his will, she 
would never have had her's. He contends that if Shakspeare had loved and 
honoured his wife, he would not have written those passages, which must 
have been 'gall and wormwood to his souV That is good argument then 
that he did love her, and that they were not quite so bitter to him. Surely 
it is the more mean and unmanly to suppose that he wrote them because he 
did not love and honour his wife ! It is sad indeed to learn that Anne Hath- 
away brought the Poet to such ' sorrow and shame/ as Mr. White says is 
frequently expressed in the plays and the sonnets. This Critic takes the mat- 
ter of Anne's age so much to heart, that one would be glad to suggest any 
source of consolation. Possibly Mrs. William Shakspeare may have been 
one of those fine healthy Englishwomen — I have a sovereign sample in my 
mind's eye now— in whose presence we never think of age or reckon years ; 
whose tender spring is followed by a long and glorious summer, an autumn 
fruitful and golden. These do not attain their perfection in April ; they 
ripen longer and hoard up a maturer fragrance for the fall o' the year, a 
mellower sweetness for the winter, and about mid-season they often pause, 
wearing the bud, flower, and fruit of human beauty all at once. Time does 
not tell on these] as we are told he does on the American sisterhood. 
Anne outlived her husband many years, and tradition says she earnestly 
desired to be laid in the same grave with him 7 but that no one, for fear 
of the curse on it, dared touch the gravestone. Mr. White should have seen 
in this the object for which the lines were written! 



LEAVING STRATFORD. 503 

there is no reason to suppose that he ran away from home 
because he did not like his wife. 

Another supposition obtains — that he was compelled 
to quit Stratford on account of his propensity for deer- 
stealing. I do not in the least doubt his liking for venison, 
still the poor fellow did not need Sir Thomas Lucy's deer 
to drive him forth into the world in search of a living. 
We must remember that his wife had very recently 
presented him with twin children, and at this hint of his 
better half, he may have thought it quite time to look out 
for better quarters. The increasing poverty of his father 
would be another incentive to his leaving the old place. 
This must have many a time made him look wistfully up 
that London road at the top of Henley street, and long 
for the great city, which loomed far in the distance, and 
rose up so golden through the mist that would be filling 
his eyes. 

In all probability our Poet went to London to be a 
player. He must have been a born actor ; a dramatist, 
in that shape, before he became one in writing. This was 
the constitution of his nature ; the very mould of his mind. 
The strongest proof to me that the ' Lover's Lament ' 
is personal to Shakspeare, is the description of his exqui- 
site art and abundant subtlety as an actor. His tendency 
and inclination, if not his capability as such, must have 
been known to some of his fellow townsmen, and he would 
easily secure a good introduction to the theatre. That he 
served an apprenticeship to the law I do not believe. To 
say that he has a wider acquaintance with law — uses legal 
forms and phrases more freely and unerringly than any 
other poet, is only to say that we are speaking of Shak- 
speare in one of the many departments of knowledge 
where, as a poet, he is unparalleled ; he is not a whit 
more wonderful in this than in so many other things. 
I think he obtained his insight through a personal con- 
nexion with some live spirit of a friend, who could throw a 



504 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

light into the dark intricacies and cobwebbed corners of the 
law, rather than from any dead drudgery in an attorney's 
office. Nor have we far to seek for such a possible 
friend. There was Greene, the attorney, a Stratford man, 
and a cousin of the Poet, whose brain and books may have 
been at his service, and Shakspeare was the man who 
could make more use of other men's knowledge than they 
could themselves. The worst of it for the theory of his 
having been an attorney's clerk is that it will not account 
for his insight into Law. His knowledge is not office- 
sweepings, but ripe fruits, mature as though he had spent 
his life in their growth. The law stood high in Elizabeth's 
estimation, and the Poet had his own private interest in 
mastering its details so far as was possible. 

After he entered the Blackfriars Theatre, we lose 
sight of him altogether for some years. These years, 
doubtless, include the hardest part of our Poet's struggle 
for fame and fortune, which was at that time really 
a struggle for his living. Our ' gentle ' Shakspeare 
had his sufferings, and it may be especially at this time. 
Not that I imagine personal suffering to have been his 
incentive to song. He was not one of the subjective 
brood, who find their inspiration in such a source. Large- 
ness of sympathy with others, rather than intensity of 
sympathy with self, was Shakspeare's poetic motive. His 
soul was not a self-reflecting one, but a large mirror, that 
gave back images of other lives ; absence of self being an 
essential, and calmness a necessary condition of clearness. 
This capacious mirror of his mind, and his sublimest mood, 
are best indicated by his own words, in the poem of 
' Lucrece,' where, he speaks of the ' bottomless conceit that 
comprehends in still imagination.' It is from a false view 
of the sonnets that it has been supposed he lived his 
tragedies before he wrote them. It is in natures of the 
Byronic kind that the amount of force heaving below, 
images itself permanently above in a mountain of visible 



EARLY STRUGGLES. 505 

personality. Shakspeare's truer image would be the ocean 
that can mould mountains into shape, yet keep its own 
level ; and grow clear and calm as ever, with all heaven 
smiling in its depths, after the wildest storm, the most 
heart-breaking Tragedy. 

His was not one of your ' suffering souls.' These are 
wrung and pinched, gnarled and knotted into a more em- 
phatic form of personality than he wears for us. He 
could keep a calm ' sough ; ' convert his surplus steam 
into force ; consume his own smoke, and make his devil 
draw for him. He gathered all the sunshine he could and 
ripened on it, and his spirit enlarged and mellowed in 
content. 

This, however, we may safely infer ; his circumstances 
were not very flourishing at first, or we should hardly 
hear of his father being in prison for debt, where we find 
him in 1587, when Shakspeare has been in London two 
years. His strong sense of family pride would have 
prevented such a thing if possible. We hear of him 
again in 1589, when he has been four years in London, 
and, if apocryphally, it must be near the mark. 

Mr. Browning tells us there are two points in the 
adventure of the diver — 

' One — when, a Beggar, he prepares to plunge ! 
One — when, a Prince, he rises with his pearl ! ' 

Our Poet had now made his plunge, and emerged into 
daylight once more. If we could have asked him what 
he had grasped in the gloom, he might probably have 
told us a handful of mud, having experienced the worst 
of his theatrical fife. He had become a player and a 
part proprietor of the Blackfriars Theatre. But he had 
also found his pearl. They had set him to vamp up old 
plays, put flesh on skeletons, and adapt new ones ; and 
he had discovered that he also could make as well as 
mend. During this time he had been working, invisible 
to us, at the foundations of his future fame ; like the 



"506 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

trees and plants, he had been clutching his rootage in the 
night time. 

Here again let me remark on the influence which a 
personal theory of the sonnets has unconsciously had in 
making the commentators ignore the extreme probability 
that, as soon as he was able, our Poet would naturally 
have his wife and family to live with him in London. 
It has been discovered that he paid rates, and why on 
earth should he not have received his wife and children at 
his home near the Bear-garden, in Southwark,or St. Helen's, 
Bishopsgate ? He was by nature a family man ; true to our 
most English instincts ; his heart must have had its sweet 
domesticities of home-feeling nestling very deep in it — our 
love of privacy and our enjoyment of that 4 safe, sweet 
corner of the household fire, behind the heads of children.' 
The letter attributed to Southampton records that he was a 
married man, of good repute as such, and implies that the 
wife and family lived with him in London. The true read- 
ing of Betterton's story told through Eowe, is that Shak- 
speare left his wife and family temporarily, and, as he 
could not have returned to them after the short time of 
parting to live at Stratford, they, of course, rejoined him 
in London. Besides which, the mention of his going to 
Stratford once a year suggests that his home was in 
London, and this was a holiday visit. And, if the wife is 
to be thrust aside, on account of her age, can we imagine 
that Shakspeare's home would be in London, and his 
daughter Susannah and his boy Hamnet, in whom lay his 
cherished hope of succession, at Stratford? Again, if 
he had left Anne Hathaway in dislike, why should he 
have been in such apparent haste to go back to live with 
his rustic wife, and buy for her the best house — the Great 
House — in Stratford ? We may rest satisfied that Shak- 
speare did just the most natural thing — which was to 
have a home of his own, with his wife and family in it: 
that he dwelt, as Wisdom dwells, with children round his 



HIS HOME IX LONDON. 507 

knees. And in this privacy he was hidden, when others of 
his contemporaries were visible about town ; here it was 
that so much of his work was clone ; here 'his silence 
would sit brooding;' so many of his days were passed 
unnoticed, and he could live the quiet happy life that 
leaves the least record. 

We should have still fewer facts of Shakspeare's life 
than we have, were it not for his evident ambition to 
make money, and become a man of property. Whatso- 
ever feeling for fame and immortality he may have had, 
he assuredly possessed a great sense of mortal needs. He 
never forgot those little mouths waiting to be fed by his 
hand ; and we may believe him to have been as frugal in 
his life as he was indefatigable in his work. He had seen 
enough of the ills and felt enough of the stings of poverty 
in his father's home. So he sets about gaining what 
money he can by unwearied diligence in working, and 
grasps it firmly when he has it. 

As a proof of his prosperity it may be noted that his 
father had applied to the Heralds' College, in 1596, for 
a grant of coat-armour ; and, in 1597, a suit in Chancery 
was commenced on the part of John and Mary Shak- 
speare, for the recovery of an estate which had been 
mortgaged by them. In the year 1597 he is able to buy 
the best house in Stratford, called New Place. In the 
next year he sells a load of stone to the Corporation for 
lOd. Prom this little fact we may infer that alterations 
were going on at New Place. He had worked hard for 
some years, and made a nest, and was, as we say, 
'feathering' it ready for the time when he could quit 
the stage, and retire to Stratford. He is also doing a 
stroke of business as a maltster, or, rather, is not this the 
likeliest reading of facts ? In the year 1598 he was 
assessed on property in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate. Two 
years later his name has dropped out of the list. Now, 
as New Place was bought and made ready by that time, the 



508 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

most probable conjecture is that his wife and family left the 
house in London and went back to Stratford to live in their 
new home. And, instead of the ten quarters of corn then 
at New Place implying that he was trading as a maltster, it 
may have been that Shakspeare had provisioned the little 
garrison, in the matter of baking and brewing, against 
famine ; for there was a great dearth of corn in the land 
at the time, and such a careful forethought would be 
exceedingly like him ? His circumstances had so far 
improved that he could now look forward to longer visits 
to Stratford, and, as he wrote more he would undoubtedly 
begin to play less. London may not have agreed with 
his children. Had not his boy Hamnet died in 1596? 

He not only makes money, but he invests it, and turns it 
over. The fame of his wealth soon spreads, and he is 
looked up to in the Golden City. Some of his country 
friends want him to buy, and he does buy ; others want 
him to lend, and he is able to lend. He lends to Richard 
Quiney, the father of his future son-in-law, the sum of 
30/. We are not sure that he did not take interest for it. 
The transaction has a smack of percentage about it. Of - 
this we may be sure, that if Shakspeare did not take 
interest for his money, he took a most lively interest in it. 
In May, 1602, his brother Gilbert completed for him the 
purchase of 107 acres of arable land, from William and 
John Comb. In September of. the same year, he bought 
other property in his native town. In 1604 he brought an 
action against Philip Rogers, in the Court of Record, at 
Stratford, to recover a debt of 11. 15s. 10<i. In July, 
1605, he makes his largest investment. He purchases for 
the sum of 440/. more than 2000Z. of our money — half of 
the lease of tithes, to be collected in Stratford and other 
places, which has some thirty-one years to run. 

He is now trying to leave the stage as player and 
manager, and live at Stratford, where he can look after 
his tithes, which we find he does pretty sharply. He 



THE ORB ON THE HORIZON. 509 

has acquired houses and lands, and obtained a grant of 
arms, and shown every desire to found a county family ; 
to possess a bit of this dear England in which he 
could plant the family tree, and go down to posterity that 
way. He appears to -have been truly thoughtless and 
careless of fame, and to have flung off his works to find 
their own way as best they could to immortality. Pub- 
lishers might print or misprint his poems, and he seems 
to have taken no public notice of it. It is possible that 
he had some large and lazy idea of one day collecting and 
correcting an edition for the press. If so, it passed into 
that Coleridgian Limbo of unfulfilled intentions where so 
many others have gone, or else death overtook him all 
too swiftly. It is quite as possible that he may have 
thought Puritanism was about to sweep the land clear of 
plays and play-goers. But that he was ambitious of 
founding a local family house, which should have such 
foundations in the soil of England as he could broaden 
out with his own toil, is one of the most palpable facts of 
his life, enforced again and again, a fact most absolutely 
opposed to the fancy that he lived apart from his wife — ■ 
and it brings the man home to us with his own private 
tastes and national feelings, plainly as though he had lived 
but the other day, as Walter Scott. 

We now turn to his life in London and what is said of 
him there. His first rising is sun-like, with the mists 
about him — the mists of malice and envy. The earlier 
writers for the stage are jealous and disgusted that a 
mere player, a factotum for the theatre, should enter the 
arena with ' college pens ' and classical scholars. But 
for these mists, the breath of slander, and for the visible 
blinking of the little lights at the glory of great sunrise, 
we should not know when or where the new orb was first 
visible on the horizon. Our Poet, however, takes little 
notice of them, but ascends serenely on his upward way. 
Most assuredly he had to fight for his place, and struggle 



510 SIIAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

arduously at starting to win it. This child of Nature would 
be ]ooked upon as a bastard by the learned, with no Greek 
or Soman godfather to stand sponsor for him. He tried 
his best at times, as we may see, to be classical, and stuck 
into his work all the mythologic allusions and Latin 
words he could get together ; at which his enemies 
laughed and made fun — thus forcing him more and more 
to that reliance on Nature which was to raise him so high 
above all his artificial, euphuistic, over-classical contempo- 
raries. They might laugh, without — Nature was too 
strong within him. He, too, had dallied with the old 
Greek lyre in a dilettante fashion in his poems — the only 
pee try of his almost that his contemporaries praise. But 
he was now fast growing into the human personification 
of that legendary Israfel whose lyre was his own heart- 
strings, not a pretty instrument to be held in the hand. 
Moreover, the audience at the Blackfriars was unsophis- 
ticated enough to prefer Shakspeare's more natural 
drama to the learning and classicism of others, which was 
annoying, indeed, to all second-hand poets. 1 This strife 
betwixt the natural and what was thought the true art 
runs through all we hear of Shakspeare. There was 
many a gird at him and his want of learning, and his 
wit as not being college-bred. Bacon we know thought 
Latin the only language for immortality. Luckily Shak- 
speare found English sufficient. This strife would be bitter 
at first. It mellowed afterwards into the humour of the 
6 wit-combats,' but it reappears all through. We get a hint 
of it from Shakspeare himself in sonnet 78 : 

e But thou art all my Art, and dost advance 
As high as Learning, my rude ignorance.' 

We doubt not that our Poet in his quiet way gave his 
opponents as good as they sent. We know how he 

1 'Few of the University pen plays well. Why, here's our fellow Shak- 
speare puts them all down.' The Return from Parnassus. 



EARLIEST RECOGNITION. 511 

mimicked and mocked their affectations. We should 
prefer to think the anecdote true that tells of one of Shak- 
speare's replies to Jons on, it looks so representative. It 
is said our Poet was godfather to one of Ben's children. 
After the christening Ben found him in a deep study, and 
asked him what he was thinking about. He replied that 
he had been considering what would be the most fitting 
gift for him to bestow on his god-child, and he had 
resolved at last. c I prythee what ? ' says the father. 
' I'faith, Ben,' (fancy the rare smile of our gentle Willie !) 
' I'll e'en give him a dowzen good Lattin spoones, and thou 
shalt translate them.'' 

I do not share the belief that Spenser's well-known 
description in his ' Teares of the Muses ' was meant for 
Shakspeare. Here the representation is so according to our 
present view of the Poet that it has been caught at and 
identified. But we may safely say that no man living in 
1590 (the year in which the poem was really printed, 
possibly for the second time,) ever saw Shakspeare as the 
' man whom Nature's self had made to mock herself, and 
truth to imitate.' Todd's conjecture that Philip Sidney 
was the 'Willy' 1 meant is borne out by the whole of 
the facts, internal and external. Todd supposes the poem 
with all likelihood to have been written in 1580 ; and in 
1580 we find Sidney had retired into the country dis- 
gusted with the court. It is the man, much more than 
the author, that Spenser celebrates. But he evidently 
alludes to the ' Arcadia ' in the ' kindly counter under 
mimic shade.'' He also refers to the distaste of Sidney for 
printing what he had written, when he speaks of those 
who ' dare their follies forth so rashlie thro we.' His 
' choosing to sit in idle cell ' most probably refers to 
Sidney's retirement, which lasted for some years, during 
which time he would neither take public employment nor 
publish what he had written. We need not scruple to 

1 ' Willy ' was a general name for a Shepherd, i. e. Poet. 



512 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

say that Shakspeare's art could not at that time have been 
thus recognised. Sidney's ' Arcadia ' and ' Masques ' 
furnished the kind of art that Spenser meant ; such art 
as has a lurking consciousness of doing its work a little 
better than nature could. The person aimed at is like- 
wise one of the ' learned^ whereas Shakspeare was not. 
If Sidney be not the writer alluded to, I am perfectly 
satisfied that it could not have been Shakspeare. 

The lines in ' Colin Clout's come home again,' sup- 
posed to point out our Poet, are in every way more 
likely— 

6 And there, though last not least, is iEtion ; 
A gentler Shepherd may no-where be found ; 
Whose Muse, full of high thoughts' invention, 
Doth, like himself, heroically sound.' 

These suit the Poet's name, his nature and his histories. 

If this be Shakspeare so modestly placed by Spenser 
it could hardly have been the same Poet as he who was 
so enthusiastically besung by him years before ! 

It was two years later that Greene gave expression to 
his splenetic attack upon the new and rising Dramatist, 
and spoke of him as the upstart crow of a Player who was 
beginning to dress in the feathers of braver birds, and sup- 
posed that he could ' bombast out a blank verse' with the 
best of them. 1 There is personal character in Greene's 
description. He calls the Poet 4 an Absolute Johannes 
Fac-totumJ or Jack-of-all-trades for his Theatre, who could 
turn his hand to whatsoever work had to be done and do 
it with all his might. It gives us a lusty sense of Shak- 
speare's activity, and shows that he had to play many 
parts. The ' Tiger's heart' is also significant. As though 
the fellow had apprehended dimly the coming earthquake 

1 In spite of Nash's disclaimer, and Chettle's testimony as to the hand- 
writing of Greene, there is some ground for suspicion that Nash had to do 
with the ' Groat's-worth of wit.' In his epistle prefixed to Greene's { Mena- 
phon] this writer speaks of those i who think to outbrave better pens with the 
swelling bombast of bragging blank verse.'' 



HARVEY'S DEFENCE. 513 

of the great 'Shake-scene' and caught a glimpse of the cou- 
chant strength and stealthy might of the man Shakspeare, 
and turned his own inward fears into outward bravado of 
abuse, just as the savage will taunt the imprisoned or 
wounded king of beasts when he himself is out of harm's 
way. 

In September of the same year Gabriel Harvey took 
up the cudgels on behalf of himself and others who 
had been attacked and outrageously abused by the Greene 
' set,' and replied to ' Woeful Greene and beggarly Pierce 
Penniless, as it were a Grasshopper and a Cricket, two 
pretty Musicians but silly creatures ; the Grasshopper 
imaged would be nothing less than a Green Dragon, and 
the Cricket malcontented the only Unicorn of the Muses.' 
The letters are ' especially touching parties abused by Robert 
Greene — incidentally of divers excellent persons, and some 
matters of note' In the third of these we have what I be- 
lieve to be the most appreciative of all contemporary notices 
of Shakspeare : the only intimation that anyone then living 
had caught the splendid sparkle of the jeAvel that was yet 
to 'lighten all the isle.' It is surprising to me that no 
more attention should have been attracted to this veiy 
obvious recognition of the rising genius of Shakspeare. 
Harvey is partly pleading, partly expostulating with l^ash. 
I speak, he says, to a Poet, but ' good sweet orator, be a 
divine Poet indeed.' He urges him to employ his golden 
talent to honour virtue and valour with s heroical cantos,' 
as ' noble Sir Philip Sidney and gentle Maister Spenser 
have done, with immortal fame.' He is pleading for more 
nature in poetry. ' Eight Artificiality,' he urges, ' is not 
mad-brained, or ridiculous, or absurd, or blasphemous, or 
monstrous ; but deep-conceited, but pleasurable, but deli- 
cate, but exquisite, but gracious, but admirable.' He 
points out what he considers the finest models, the truest 
poetry of the past, and, turning to the Elizabethan time, 
he names some dear lovers of the Muses whom lie admires 

L L 



514 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

and cordially recommends, making mention of Spenser, 
Watson, Daniel, Nash, and others. These he thanks affec- 
tionately for their studious endeavours to polish and enrich 
their native tongue. He tells the poets of the day that he 
appreciates their elegant fancy, their excellent wit, their 
classical learning, their efforts to snatch a grace from the 
antique, but he has discovered the bird of a new dawn, 
with a burst of music fresh from the heart of Nature, 
and its prelusive warblings have made his spirits dance 
within him ; his words mount upon a rapture, as he ' rises 
on the toe.' He will not call this new Poet by name, be- 
cause, were he to say what he feels, he should be suspected 
of exaggeration, over-praise, or unworthy motive. But he 
says it is the ' sweetest and divinest Muse that ever sang 
in English or other language /' 

Now this cannot be either Spenser or Sidney ; these he 
has named. It cannot be Drayton, for it is a new man, 
and this is a plea for a new Poet, one of those whom 
Greene has abused. The writer is bespeaking the atten- 
tion of Poets and Critics, more especially of Thomas Nash, 
to the writings of this new Poet, and he pleads with 
those who natter themselves on being learned not to sneer 
at or neglect this 'fine handiwork of Nature and excel- 
lenter Art combined. Gentle minds and flourishing wits 
were infinitely to blame if they should not also, for curious 
imitation, propose unto themselves such fair types of re- 
fined and engraced eloquence. The right novice of preg- 
nant and aspiring conceit will not outskip any precious 
gem of invention, or any beautiful flower of elocution that 
may richly adorn or gallantly bedeck the trim garland of 
his budding style. I speak generally to every springing 
wit ; but more especially to a few, and at this instant sin- 
gularly to one, whom I salute with a hundred blessings, 
and entreat, with as many prayers, to love them that love 
all good icits, and hate none, but the Devil and his incarnate 
imps notoriously professed' This was published by 



THE NEW POET ANNOUNCED. 515 

Gabriel Harvey late in the year 1592, in answer to the 
attacks of Nash and Greene. Every particular points to 
Shakspeare as the Poet meant. Marlowe certainly is not 
named in the list of poets mentioned, though he may be 
hinted at as one of those 'notoriously professed.' He, how- 
ever, was one that had been to college. This is a plea on 
behalf of some one who has not, but who has been at- 
tacked by the classic pen of 4 young Juvenal' Nash. It is 
a reply to the petulance and bitterness of Greene, and his 
friend, the ' by ting satyrist.' It is addressed to Thomas 
Nash who, it must be remembered, was Shakspeare's ' old 
sweet enemy ; ' about the earliest to sneer at the player 
who was gradually becoming a Poet, in his ' Anatomie of 
Absurditie' printed in 1590, two years before he was 
pelted with the wild and stupid abuse of the ' Groat 's- 
worth of Wit ' — in which, if Nash had no hand, we have 
only too true a reflex of his spirit. If Nash and Greene 
aimed at Shakspeare in their attacks, assuredly it is Shak- 
speare whom Gabriel Harvey defends. The evidence is 
conclusive. In effect Harvey replies to Nash, ' You are 
infinitely to blame in the course you are pursuing with 
regard to this new writer. Do not, I beseech you, wilfully 
blind your eyes to so much beauty.' This he does in a 
gentle conciliatory spirit, not wishing to stir up strife. 
' Love them that love all good wits,' he says, ' and hate 
none.'' 

Thus to Harvey belongs the honour of first proclaim- 
ing the sunrise. Others may have perceived the orient 
colours, but this writer first said it was so, and cried aloud 
the new dawn in English Poetry — had the intuition neces- 
sary for seeing that the nature of Shakspeare's work was 
incomparably higher than all the Art of the Classical School, 
and uttered his feeling with a forthright, frank honesty, in 
a strain so lofty, that it found no echo in that age until Ben 
Jonson gave the rebound in his noble lines to Shakspeare's 
memory. But Jonson then stood in the after-glow that 

L L 2 



516 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

followed the sunset. Harvey penned his eulogy in the light 
of the early sunrise. He pointed out the first springing 
beams, and called upon all who were true worshippers 
of the sacred fire. He alone dared to speak such a lusty 
panegyric of the new Poet's natural graces, and exalt his 
art above that of his most learned rivals with their fantas- 
tic conceits, their euphuistic follies, and ' Aretinish moun- 
tains of huge exaggeration.' He alone called upon those 
who were decrying Shakspeare so coarsely, to study 
his works, and try to imitate his style ; this he did in words 
which have the heart-warmth of personal friendship trying 
to make friends for a friend out of the bitterest enemies : l 
words which were, no doubt, laughed at uproariously. 

This early recognition of Shakspeare arises out of the 
old quarrel of Learning versus the natural brain, which 
appears and reappears in all we hear of Shakspeare's literary 
life. In this quarrel Nash made the first onset, continued the 
battle along with the Greene clique, until awed into silence 
by the majestic rise and dilation of Shakspeare's genius, 
or forced to lay his hand on his mouth because, as Chettle 
confessed, ' clivers of worship have reported his upright- 
ness of dealing, which argues his honesty and his facetious 
grace in writing, that approves his Art.' And because 
some influence had been brought to bear on Nash to make 
him so quickly follow the ' Groat'sworth of Wit ' with a 
Private 'Epistle to the Printer' prefixed to the 2nd edi- 
tion of his ' Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Divell ' 
(1592) in which he repudiates having had anything to do 

1 In most of the comments on the Nash and Harvey quarrel, Nash wins 
all the sympathy, and Harvey all the ridicule. The Professor was a very 
pompous writer, but Greene was an indefensible blackguard, as bitter after 
his conversion as before, and Nash was a thorough mud-lark of literature, 
dearly delighting in the dirt he flung. Harvey certainly did one good 
thing when he proclaimed that this new genius flashed the authentic fire, 
and he said one good thing when he called Greene's 'Arcadia'' the very 
funeral of Sidney's ! He was probably on such a footing with some of 
Shakspeare's ' private friends,' as to get a look at the earliest sonnets, and 
the ' Venus and Adonis,' then in MS. 



THE 'LEARNED' AND SELF-EDUCATED. 517 

with Greene's pamphlet, in such furious words as these : — 
8 Other news I am advertised of, that a scald, trivial, lying 
pamphlet, called " Greene's Groat'sworth of Wit," is given 
out to be of my doing. God never have care of my soul, 
but utterly renounce me, if the least word or sillible in it 
proceeded from my pen, or if I were any way privie to 
the writing or printing of it.' I have accounted for the 
change in Nash by supposing him to have found a patron 
in the Earl of Southampton. 

There are signs, I think, that Shakspeare grew sick of 
hearing so much said about learning by those who 
showed so little wisdom in their lives. There seems to 
be a hint of this in the ' Taming of the Shrew ' : Gremio 
exclaims, 

i this Learning ; what a thing it is ! ' 

and Grumio replies, 

6 this Woodcock ; what an ass it is ! ' 

He had the self-mastery that could keep quietly cool 
in front of the most wrathful fire which his success had 
kindled in others, but he sometimes smote them with his 
humour as with a sun-stroke. For instance, in the case 
of those ' feathers ' Greene had charged him with steal- 
ing — a charge that was re-echoed in 1594, by the 
author of ' Greene's Funerals ' ; 

6 Nay more, the men that so eclipsed his fame 
Purloined his plumes ! Can they deny the same ? ' 

Shakspeare assuredly makes private reference to these in 
sonnet 78, and a public one in ' Hamlet.' When the 
prince grows exultant over the marked success of the 
speech which he had set down for the players — he 
remarks to Horatio, ' Would not this Sir, and a forest of 
feathers — if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk, with me — 
with two Provencal Eoses on my razed shoes, get me a 



518 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

fellowship in a cry of players ? ' Plainly enough this in- 
dicates the way in which Shakspeare took his place in the 
Blackfriars Company, and also contains a smiling allusion 
to Greene's charge as to the manner of feathering his nest 
there. 

There is more, however, in Hamlet's words than this 
making fun of the ' feathers ; ' something covertly con- 
cealed under the rose that no one has yet espied. If we 
look intently we shall see the snake stir beneath the 
flowers ; a subtle snake of irony with the most wicked 
glitter in its eye ! 

I do not know the origin of the legend, but reference 
is frequently made by the Elizabethan dramatists to the 
devil hiding his cloven hoof under a rose stuck on the 
shoe. Webster alludes to it in his ' White Devil,' 

< Why 'tis the Devil ! 
I know him by a great rose he wears on 's shoe, 
To hide his cloven foot.' 

And Ben Jonson has a character ' Fitzdottrel ' in ' The 
Devil is an Ass,' who has long been desirous of meeting 
with Satan ; so long that he begins to think there is no 
devil at all but what the painters have made. On sud- 
denly seeing ' Pug ' he is startled into fearing that his 
great wish may be at last realised, and he exclaims — 

'fore hell, my heart was at my mouth, 
Till I had vieived his shoes well ; for those Roses 
Were big enough to hide a cloven hoof! ' 

Hamlet's puzzling remark assuredly glances at this legend 
of the Devil hiding his cloven hoof under the rose. The 
poet has a double intention in making such an allusion. On 
the surface it may be interpreted as pointing to the trick 
played on the King and Court, by Hamlet's having so 
cunningly used the players for his purpose in touching 
upon the matter of the murder — thus hiding the cloven 



SUB ROSA. 519 

hoof in the buskin. But it goes deeper, and means 
more. It is the private laugh about the ' feathers ' con- 
tinued. The poet is still jesting at the consternation 
and amazement which his presence and his success had 
created amongst his learned rivals and the outcry they 
made, as though the very devil had broken loose in the 
theatre, and was hiding his cloven foot in a player's shoe ! 
This reading will determine two things. First, that 
' razed shoes ' signifies shoes cut or cloven, corresponding 
to the cloven hoof. In Jonson's play ' Fitzdottrel ' says — 

6 Your shoe 's not cloven, Sir.' 

Secondly, the roses intended are Provencal roses, not 
Provincial. The Eose of Provence was a splendid large 
rose, and it is here chosen on account of its size and the 
shelter it affords the cloven hoof, or (as the Wit renders 
it) ; razed shoe. ' In Webster's drama the devil wears a 
6 great rose,' and in Jonson's the rose is ' big enough to 
hide a cloven hoof.' So Shakspeare, in his way of using 
a word that will burst into bloom, and make a picture of 
his meaning, selects the Provencal Eose. 

Again, in this same play he pokes fun at Master Nash ! 
He has taken the identical subject treated by Marlowe and 
Nash in their ' Dido, Queen of Carthage,' for the purpose 
of mocking the rant and bombast of these learned writers, 
the speech chosen, most probably, being the work of 
Nash. ' One speech in it I chiefly loved,' says Hamlet 
' 'twas iEneas' tale to Dido ; and thereabout of it espe- 
cially, where he speaks of Priam's slaughter.' He then 
proceeds to outdo the said speech, which in ' Dido ' 
begins — 

' At which the frantic Queen leap'd on his face, 
And in his eyelids hanging by the nails, 
A little while prolonged her husband's life — ' 

the c frantic Queen ' is turned into the ' mobled Queen,' and 



520 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

in both speeches poor old Priam is struck down with the 
wind of Pyrrhus' sword. The burlesque is most patent 
and complete ; the Poet's face is all one radiant broad 
grin underneath the gravest of tragic masks. The Critics 
have discovered I know not what concealed artistic pur- 
pose in this bit of Shakspeare's natural and irrepressible 
fun ! 

Jonson spoke the last word in this quarrel, now grown 
kindly, when he said that Shakspeare had little Latin and 
less Greek. 

In Marston's c Scourge of Yillanie,' satire 11, entitled 
' Humours,' there is a description which most unmistake- 
ably points to Shakspeare, and no one else — 

'Luscus, what's plaid to-day? Faith, now I know 
I set thy lips abroach, from ivhence doth flow 
Naught but pure Juliet and Romeo ! 
Say who acts best ? Drusus or Roscio ? 
Noiv I have him, that nere of ought did speak, 
But when of Playes or Players he did treat — 
Hath made a Commonplace-Book out of Playes, 
And speaks in print : at least what ere he saies 
Is warranted by curtain plaudites, 
If ere you heard him courting Lesbians eyes ! 
Say (courteous Sir), speaks he not movingly, 
From out some new pathetique Tragedy ? 
He writes, he rails, he jests, he courts (what not) ? 
And all from out his huge, long-scraped stock 
Of well-penned Plays.' 

Marston has in a previous satire (the 7th), parodied the 
exclamation of Eichard in ' A Man ! a Man ! a Kingdom 
for a Man ! ' And in this he repeats the expressions and 
parodies the speech of Capulet when calling upon his 
company for a dance — 

f A hall ! a hall ! give room and foot it girls. 
More light ye knaves, &c.' 

This Marston mocks thus — 



MARSTON'S GIRDS. 521 

< A hall ! a hall ! 
Room for the spheres, the orbs celestial 1 
Will dance Kemp's jigge ; they'll revel with neat jumps ; 
A worthy Poet hath put on their pumps.' 

This will show how visibly Shakspeare was in the writer's 
mind. Next ' Eoscius ' was the name by which Burbage 
was everywhere known : he was called by that name in 
his lifetime, and Camden uses it in chronicling the player's 
death. And then we have Shakspeare coupled with him 
as ' Drusus,' either after the eloquent Bonian Tribune or 
some character in a play now lost. The two are named 
together as the chief men of the company that played 
' Eomeo and Juliet.' So these two, Shakspeare and Bur- 
bage, are afterwards named together by John Davies in 
his ' Microcosmos.' Shakspeare is also identified by the 
allusion to ' Eomeo and Juliet.' This Lascus is a wor- 
shipper of the new dramatic poet, who speaks so movingly 
from out each new pathetic tragedy. He talks of little 
else than Shakspeare, and is infected by the ebulliant 
passion of this wonderful drama that has taken the town 
by storm. At the mention of a theatre, Shakspeare's is 
first in the satirist's mind, and at the mention of plays he 
says, ' Now, I know you are off ! nothing goes down with 
you but Shakspeare's plays ; you can talk of nothing but 
Shakspeare.' This notice is intensely interesting. It is 
the gird of an envious rival, who pays unwilling tribute 
to our poet's increasing popularity, and at the same time 
gives us the most perfect little sketch of the man and his 
manners, as Marston saw him ! He has marked his reti- 
cence in such company as that of Playwrights and Players ; 
only speaking upon what to them would be the subject of 
subjects ; and he feels well enough that he has never got 
at him. Now, he says, ' I have him who is so difficult to 
get at.' He is known also as a great maker of extracts ; 
he keeps a common-place book filled from out his huge 
long-accumulating stock of plays. So that he has been 



522 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

a diligent collector of dramas, or maker of notes, and a 
great student of his special art. It has been his custom 
to copy the best things he met with into "his scrap-book. 
The satirist almost repeats Greene's ' Johannes Fac-totum' 
in his description of our Poet's varied ability, his aptness 
in doing many things with as much earnestness as though 
each were the one thing he came into this world to do. He 
writes, he rails, he jests, he courts (what not?). And all 
— this is how the malevolent rival accounts for the abound- 
ing genius ! — and all from out his collection of plays and 
the scraps hoarded in his common-place book. Marston's 
'satyres' were published in 1598, and this is evidently 
written at the moment when ' Borneo and Juliet ' is in the 
height of its success. It is the new pathetic tragedy of 
these lines. Also, the image of the love-poet courting 
Lesbia's eyes is obviously suggested by the balcony scene 
of this play. 

It is curious, too, that he should ask which of the 
two is the better actor — Shakspeare or Burbage ? ' He 
speaks in prinf reminds us of Hamlet's speech to the 
players. According to this witness, it would look as 
though the Poet had there figured himself for us some- 
what as his contemporaries saw him amongst his own 
company of players. It makes one wonder how much he 
had to do personally with the great acting of Burbage, 
in moulding such an embodiment of his own conceptions, 
and inspiring the player when spirit sharpened spirit and 
face kindled face. He was six years older than Burbage, 
and the great Master of his Art. Of course, Marston's, 
notice is meant to be satirical, although he wriggles in 
vain to raise a smile at his subject. This writer has 
another mean ' gird ' at our Poet in his ' What you Will ' 
(act ii. sc, 1)— 

6 Ha ! he mounts Chirall on the wings of fame, 
A horse ! a horse I my kingdom for a horse ! 
Look thee, / speak play scraps P 



DA VIES' MAP OF THE TOETS MICROCOSM. 523 

which still further helps to identify Shakspeare by a 
double allusion. 

I have previously remarked that no doubt Shak- 
speare gave his contemporaries as good as they sent, 
and although we may be able to decipher but few of 
his replies, one at least is very definite. We have seen 
that John Davies of Hereford made various allusions to 
Shakspeare. We are very glad of these now in the dearth 
of information. But we may well imagine that if any- 
thing was particularly unbearable to our Poet, it must 
have been the pat of approbation bestowed on him by 
this garrulous old gentleman and persevering poetiser. 
Accordingly, as I conjecture, Shakspeare does flash fire 
and lighten from his cloud upon him and his descriptions 
in the person of ' Menenius.' 1 Thrice had Davies tried to 
compliment our Poet at the expense of his profession, and 
pitied him that Fortune had not put him to better uses. 
This he has clone most noticeably in his poem entitled 
' Microcosnms.' He had also addressed Shakspeare as 
6 our English Terence ' thus — 

f Some say good Will, which I in sport do sing, 

Hadst thou not plaid some kingly parts in sport, 
Thou hadst bin a companion for a King, 

And been a king among the meaner sort. 
Some others rail ; but rail as they think fit, 
Thou hast no railing, bnt a reigning wit : 
And honesty thou sow'st, which they do reape, 
So to increase their stocke, which they do keepe.' 

The Poet replies : — ' I am known to be a humourous 
patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not 
a drop of allaying Tyber in't ; said to be something imper- 
fect ; hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion. What 
I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath, 
&c. ... if you see this in the Map of my Microcosm, 

1 ' Coriolanus,' act ii. sc. 1. 



524 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

follows it that I am known well enough too ? What harm 
can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character , if 
I be known well enough too ? ' Not only does Shakspeare 
take him by the beard to smite him thus and give him, as 
Hood says, two black eyes for being blind, but he has plu- 
ralisecl the old schoolmaster for the pleasure of thrash- 
ing him double. ' I cannot say your worships have de- 
livered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound 
with the major part of your syllables, and though I must 
be content to bear with those that say you are reverend 
grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you you have good 
faces. You know neither me, yourselves, nor anything ! ' 
Our Poet had a double reason for his retort. He resents 
what Davies had said of the stage as well as of himself and 
Burbage. He speaks for the Company in general. He 
says in effect — 6 You have sat in judgement, you ridiculous 
old ass, but you have not handled the matter wisely or 
well. And as for the railing that Ave are charged with, 
why, our very priests must become mockers if they shall 
encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you 
speak best unto the purpose it is not worth' the wagging of 
your beard.' 

It will not be easy to detect any dramatic motive in 
these replies of Menenius ; there was no sufficient cause 
in the words of the Tribunes : they had not drawn the 
map of his Microcosm ; had not characterised him at all, 
but merely remarked ' you are well enough known, too ! ' 
>To one can, I think, compare what Davies wrote of our 
Poet in his three different poems with this outburst of 
Menenius' without seeing that the Poet has here ex- 
pressed the personal annoyance of himself and fellows. 
We may, perhaps, take it as a slight additional indication 
of Shakspeare's having John Davies in mind that nearly 
the next words spoken by Menenius on hearing that Cori- 
olanus is returning home are, ' Take my cap, Jupiter, 
and I thank thee ; ' and poor John had, in lines already 



THE 'HELICONIA.' 525 

quoted, greeted Southampton on his release from the 
Tower, with ' Southampton, up thy cap to heaven fling ! ' 

We shall get a curious side- glimpse, and, to some ex- 
tent, gauge how far Shakspeare was known to his contem- 
poraries generally in the year 1600, by turning over the 
pages of 4 England's Parnassus,' in the ' Heliconia.' Here 
we come upon numerous quotations from the ' Lucrece ' 
and i Venus and Adonis,' but the extracts from the Plays 
are most insignificant. Yet at the time mentioned he had 
in all probability produced some twenty of his dramas, 
including the ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' ' Merchant of 
Venice,' ' Taming of the Shrew,' 6 Eomeo and Juliet,' with 
other fine works of his early and middle periods. 

A breath of the passionate fragrance of the last-named 
dainty drama had reached beyond the stage. But how 
could the editor make so few extracts from such a mine of 
wealth, and snatch no more from its ' dark of diamonds ? ' 
He is in search of illustrations for given subjects, each of 
which Shakspeare has enriched with pictures beyond those 
of all other writers. He possesses taste enough to quote 
many of the choicest passages from Spenser's poetry. The 
inference is inevitable that the Poet and the poetry re- 
vealed to us in Shakspeare's Plays were unknown to 
Eobert Allot, and possibly he only quoted at second-hand. 
A playwright was not looked upon as a poet, so much as 
a worker for the theatre. Spenser was the great Apollo of 
his age. He had the true mythological touch and classical 
tread. Accordingly the 'Heliconia' contains some 370 
quotations from Spenser and only TO from Shakspeare ; 
these mainly from his two poems. As late as 1605 
Eichard Barnefield, in his ' Lady Pecunia,' praises Shak- 
speare for his Poems, but has not a word for the Plays. 

It was impossible for Shakspeare's contemporaries to 
know what there was in his works as we know them. 
They could not help knowing of his dramatic successes, 
and would often feel these to be unaccountable. But there 



526 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

was no great reading public — no criticism to bring out the 
hidden secrets of his genius. And if there had been, the 
drama was comparatively an unpublished literature. In 
this fact we may perceive one great reason why a man like 
Bacon, for example, lived so long in the same city as 
Shakspeare without discovering him, and possibly left 
the world without knowing what he had missed on the 
passage. 

(It seems impossible that they should not have met 
personally in the company of Essex and Southampton, but 
Bacon makes no mention of Shakspeare, and in all likeli- 
hood never penetrated the Player's mask.) 

The early poems were well known, and some of the 
sonnets were in circulation, but no one could predicate 
from these the stupendous genius that orbed out and 
reached its full circle in ' Lear,' and the other great 
Tragedies. 

He was better known within the Theatre, and there 
Ben Jonson being himself a player and playwright, pro- 
bably got the truest glimpse of Shakspeare's mental sta- 
ture, although I doubt not he fancied himself by much 
the better writer. Ben could supply a ' tag' to the end of 
a life as well as to the end of a play, and, when in the 
mood, sweat sincerity with all his bodily bulk. But, what 
are we to think of his compliment to the ' true-filed line ' 
when it is on record that he did not think the lines ' well- 
filed,' for when the Players boasted that Shakspeare wrote 
so easily he never blotted out a line, Ben wished he had 
blotted out a thousand. And if we are to believe Drum- 
mond, Jonson thought Shakspeare ' wanted art, and some- 
times sense;' which is countenanced by his own words — 
' he redeemed his vices by his virtues. There was ever 
more in him to be praised than to be pardoned.' If Jonson 
had really known what Shakspeare had done for the stage, 
for dramatic poetry, for English Literature, how could he 
afterwards boast that he himself would yet ' raise the 



BEN JONSON. 527 

despised head of Poetry ; stripping her out of those rotten 
and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her 
form and restore her to her primitive use and majesty, and 
render her worthy to be embraced and kissed of all the 
great and master spirits of the world.' This, after Shak- 
speare had found Poetry on the stage the slave of drudgery, 
the menial of the mob, and took her by the hand, like 
his own Marina, and led her forth apparelled in all fresh- 
ness of the spring ; fairer to look on than the ' evening 
air, clad in the beauty of ten thousand stars,' and made 
her the nursing mother of children strong and splendid ; 
set her on a throne and crowned her as a queen whose 
subjects are wide humanity; whose realm is the world. 

Ben's mind was not of a kind to jump with that of 
Shakspeare in its largest leaps. He was the genuine pro- 
totype of the critical kind that has yet a few living speci- 
mens, in those persons who still persist in looking upon 
Shakspeare as a writer far too redundant in expression. 
They appear to think the foliage waving above too 
lusty and large for the sustaining rootage below. They 
have a feeling that Shakspeare was a Poet marvellously 
endowed by Nature, but deficient in Art, the truth being, 
that what they mean by Art is the smack of conscious- 
ness in the finish left so apparent that the poetry is, 
as it were, stereotyped, and the finish gives to it a kind of 
metallic face ; something on the surface firm to the touch, 
and flattering to a certain critical sense. 

They like their poetry to be fossilised and wear a recog- 
nisable pattern. Whereas Shakspeare's is all alive, and 
illuminated from within ; as full of Nature in a book as 
the flowers are in the field. 

The secret which, in Shakspeare, is unfathomable can 
be found out in the works of more self-conscious men. In 
them Nature is subordinate to Art. But this is not the 
greatest Art ; it is the lesser Art, made more striking be- 
cause there is less Nature. 



528 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

His is not the serene art of Sophocles ; it does not 
always smile severely on the surface. Then he has — 

( Such miracles performed in play, 
Such letting Nature have its way ! ' 

and the Nature is so boundless, we have to traverse such 
an infinity of suggestiveness, that it is not easy for us to 
beat the bounds. But the Art of Shakspeare transcends 
all other Art in kind as much as the inscrutable beauty of 
soul transcends the apparent beauty of form and feature ; 
and his judgment is as sure as his genius is capacious. 
Judge him not by Greek Drama or French Art, but accept 
the conditions under which he wrought, the national 
nature with which he dealt, and he has reached the pure 
simplicity of utter perfection fifty times over to any other 
Poet's once ! In all Shakspeare's great Plays his Art is 
even more consummate, though less apparent, than that of 
Milton, and it holds the infinitely larger system of human 
world and starry brood of mind in its wider revolutions, 
with as safe a tug of gravitation. It is the testimony of all 
the greatest and most modest men that the longer they 
read his works the more reasons they find to admire his 
marvellous wisdom, and his transcendent intuition in all 
mysteries of Law as well as knowledge of life. 

Harvey's lusty reveille and Ben Jonson's eulogy not- 
withstanding, it is quite demonstrable that Shakspeare's 
contemporaries had no adequate conception of what man- 
ner of man or majesty of mind were amongst them. We 
know him better than they did ! He came upon the stage 
of his century like the merest lighter of a theatre. He 
kindled there such a splendour and jetted such ' brave fire' 
as the world never before saw. He did his work so silently, 
greeted his fellows so pleasantly, and retired so quietly, 
that the men whose faces now shine for us, chiefly from 
his reflected light, did not notice him sufficiently to tell us 
what he was like ; did not see that this man Shakspeare 



HIS UNKNOWN GREATNESS. 529 

had come to bring a new soul into the land — that in his 
plays the spirit of a new faith was to obtain magnificent 
embodiment — that here was the spontaneous effort of the 
national spirit to assert itself in our literature, and stand 
forth free from the old Greek tyranny which might other- 
wise have continued to crush our drama, as it seems to 
have crippled our sculpture to this day — that in these plays 
all the rills of language and knowledge running from other 
lands were to be merged and made one in this great ocean 
of English life. Not one of them saw clearly as we do 
that whereas Homer was the poet of Greece, and Dante 
the poet of Italy, this gentle Willie Shakspeare, player and 
playwright, was destined to be the Poet of a World ! 

His real glory was unguessed at I They could have 
given him no assurance of the 'all-hail hereafter;' the lofty 
expansion of his fame that now fills the great Globe Theatre 
of our world ! They never dreamed of the imperial way 
in which the Player should ascend his throne, to set the 
wide round ringing whose vast arch reverberates his voice 
from side to side, whilst wave on wave, age after age, 
the psean of applause is caught up and continued and 
rolled on for ever by the passing Generations ! 

I often think that one reason why he left no greater per- 
sonal impression on them was because he was so much of 
a good fellow in general ; his nature was so commonly 
human and perfect all round, as to seem to them nothing 
remarkable in particular. His greatness of soul was not 
of a kind to puff out any personal peculiarities, or manners 
' high fantastical.' He did not take his seat in a crowding 
company with the bodily bulge of big Ben, or tread on 
their toes with the vast weight of his 'mountain belly ' and 
hodman's shoulders, nor come in contact with them as Ben 
would, with the full force of his hard head and ' rocky 
face.' Shakspeare' s personal influence was not of the sort 
that is so palpably felt at all times, and often most politely 
acknowledged. He must have moved amongst them more 

M M 



530 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

like an Immortal invisible ; the deity being hidden in the 
humanity. There was room in his serene and spacious 
soul for the whole of his stage-contemporaries to sit at 
feast. His influence embraced them, lifted them out of 
themselves, floated them up from earth ; and while their 
veins ran quicksilver, and the life within them lightened, 
they would shout with Matheo^ ' Do we not fly high ? ' 
Are we not amazingly clever fellows? Don't we astonish 
ourselves ? — How little they knew what they owed to 
the mighty one in their midst ! How little could they 
gauge the virtue of his presence which wrapped them in a 
diviner ether ! When we breathe in a larger life, and 
a ruddier health from the atmosphere that surrounds us 
and sets us swimming in a sea of heart's-ease, we sel- 
dom pause to estimate how much in weight the atmo- 
sphere presses to the square inch ! So w^as it with the 
personal influence of Shakspeare upon his fellows. They 
felt the exaltation, the invisible radiation of health, the 
flowing humanity that filled their felicity to the brim ; but 
did not think of the weight of greatness that he brought 
to bear on every square inch of them. The Spirit of the 
Age sat in their very midst, but it moved them so natu- 
rally they forgot to note its personal features, and he was 
not the man to be flashing his immortal jewel in their eyes 
on purpose to call attention to it. 

Big Ben took care to bequeath his body as well as his 
mind to us. We know how much flesh he carried. We 
know his love of good eating and strong drink ; his self 
assertiveness and lust of power. We know that he 
required a high tide of drink before he could launch 
himself and get well afloat, and that amongst the Eliza- 
bethan song-birds he was named, after his beloved liquor, 
a ; Canary ' bird. One cannot help fancying that Shak- 
speare, as he sat quietly listening to Ben's brag, got many 
a hint for the fattening and glorifying of his own Fal- 
staff. How different it is with our Poet ! We get no 



THE PRINCE OF ALL GOOD FELLOWS. 531 

glimpse of him in his cups. The names they give him, 
however, are significant, They call him the ' gentle 
Willie,' the ' beloved,' the ' honey-tongued.' Fuller's 
description gives us an impression that Ben Jonson 
was no match for Shakspeare in mental quickness when 
they met in their wit-combats at the ' ]\iermaid.' Ben 
carried most in sight ; Shakspeare more out of sight. . 
For the rest, there is not much to show us what the 
man Shakspeare was, or to tell us that his fellows kuew 
what he was. But their silence is full of meaning. It 
tells that he was not an extraordinary man in the vulgar 
sense, which means something peculiar, and startling at 
first sight. He must have been too complete a man to 
be marked out by that which implies incompleteness — 
some special faculty held up for wonder, and half picked 
out by disparity on the other side ; as the valley's depth 
becomes a portion of the mountain's height, There was 
nothing of this about Shakspeare. And his completeness, 
his ripeness all round, his level height, his subtle serenity, 
would all tend to hide his greatness from them. They 
can tell us the shape of Greene's beard, which he 
'cherished continually, without cutting; a jolly long red 
peak, like the spire of a steeple, whereat a man might 
hang a jewel, it was so sharp and pendant;' his 'con- 
tinual shifting of lodgings,' the nasal sound of Ben Jon- 
son's voice, and his face 'punched full of eyelet holes 
like the lid of a warming-pan.' But they tell us nothing 
in this kind about Shakspeare, man or manner, and 
this tells us much. There was that in him which over- 
flowed all externals. 

We know they thought him a man of sweet temper 
and ready wit, honest and frank, of an open and free 
nature, very gentle and loveable, and as sociable a good 
fellow as ever lived. And, indeed, he must have been 
the best of all good fellows that ever was so wise a 
man. He could make merry with those roystering 



532 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

madcaps at the Mermaid, who heard the ' chimes at 
midnight ' but did not heed them, and he could pre- 
serve the eternal rights of his own soul, and keep sacred 
its brooding solitude. He could be the tricksy spirit 
of mad whim and waggery ; the very soul of solemn 
thought ; one of the sprightliest maskers at the carnival 
of high spirits he could go home majestic in his sad- 
ness as he had been glorious in his gladness, and brood 
over what he had seen of life with a mild melan- 
choly such as made his own life bloom more inwardly, 
and put forth those loveliest creations of his which seem 
to have unfolded in the still and balmy night-time when 
men slept, and the flowers in his soul's garden were fed 
with gracious dews from heaven. 

He had his enemies, but no man in Shakspeare's life- 
time ever ventured to assail his reputation. Greene 
makes no such charge as that which has been gathered 
from the sonnets. The only thing he can show is that 
Shakspeare was growing too successful for him. Our 
great Poet enters into none of their little quarrels. When 
they work themselves up into a passion with him, he 
takes no notice, or, if he does, it is to silently work them 
up into his next play. Whilst men like Marlowe drive 
furiously down the broad road to destruction, with passions 
four abreast, he passes quietly on his watchful way with 
serene habit and face erect, respected and self-respecting. 
He must have had his temptations to wave off or whistle 
down, and pick his way through the mire of our world ; 
but this he does most happily and cleanly, and he comes 
forth with no visible stains, or mud, clinging to him. Not 
from any sediment of vice and folly did he gather all those 
precious grains of golden wisdom. Not from his sowing 
a bountiful crop of wild oats do we reap that rich harvest 
of his works. He must have been a good man to have 
been so loveable and to have had the health that resisted 
so well the infection of his time and place. 



UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 533 

One great cause of Shakspeare's contemporaries telling 
us no more about him is still operant against our making 
him out in his works. He was one of the least self-con- 
scious men, and so he is the least personally visible in his 
writings. This was the condition of his greatness. He 
was to be so unsconscious of self as to be purely reflective 
of all passing forms. If he had been a lesser man, he 
would have shown us more of himself. If more imper- 
fect, he would have revealed more idiosyncracy. We 
should have caught him taking a peep at himself in the 
dramatic mirror. But Shakspeare's nature is all mirror 
to the world around him. A more conscious man would 
have managed to make the darkness that hides him from 
us a sort of lamp-shade which should concentrate the 
light on his own features, when he looked up in some 
self-complaisant pause. Not so Shakspeare : he throws 
all the light on his work, and bends over it so intently 
that it is most difficult to get a glimpse of his face. Our 
sole chance is to watch him at his work, and note his 
human leanings and personal relationships. 

In his first poem, ' the first heir of my invention,' 
' Venus and Adonis,' we may learn one or two out-of-door 
facts of the Poet's life. Whether he was a deer-stealer 
or not, it is certain he had been on the track of a hare. 
He knew poor puss's form, and had often seen her pow- 
dering the dew-drops into mist as she ran. He is inti- 
mately acquainted with her habits. At the mention of 
her name his thoughts are all off a-coursing at once, and 
his feeling is in full cry. He had the English spirit of 
sport in his blood, such as runs through the whole race 
from peer to poacher. He was likewise a genuine lover 
of horses, and could show off the 'points' of a thorough- 
bred in a description that would tell at Newmarket. In 
these early poems, which were most probably written in 
the country, we find the youth of Shakspeare all in flower 
and full of colour. It was the hey-day in which it looks as 



534 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

though, the battlements of heaven may be sealed by sheer 
leaps of the young blood, the senses are so keenly alive. 
The delighted spirit is in its first love with life, and Venus 
is the goddess of the youthful fancy. The outer world is 
all picture to the eye, the inner world all music and danc- 
ing. External nature makes the deepest, though often 
unconscious, impression at this time, when love works 
within and beauty without at the making of a boy into a 
poet. 

The sonnets of Shakspeare afford us the most certain 
means whereby we can get at the man. Nothing else 
except the two prose dedications speaks to us so as- 
suredly with his own voice, or tells us so unmistakably 
what were his own feelings and thoughts under various 
interesting circumstances of his own life. Our difficulty 
has been to get the right interpretation of the sonnets, 
and know when Shakspeare is really speaking in his own 
person, and where he gives utterance to the thoughts and 
feelings of another. We often heard the voice of Shak- 
speare ; we knew the voice, and yet we did not get at the 
man. It was as though he were speaking in the next 
room ; there was a partition-wall between us. We fol- 
lowed the voice, according to some theory of interpreting 
the sonnet?, but when we got into the next room Shak- 
speare was not there. Still, the voice, like that of the 
ghost of Hamlet's father, kept breaking in, compelling us 
to follow it. The chief cause of this intangibility, and the 
main reason why so many of these sonnets, seemingly 
personal, did not strike straight home to us, with the full 
force that is coiled up in their lines, will be found in the 
conditions under which they were written, and in the fact 
that the personal and dramatic ones have been mixed up, 
to all appearance, inextricably. Shakspeare was not the 
man to miss his mark, whatever that may have been, 
only we were not exactly the objects of his aim. We 
are now able for the first time since the poetry was 



THE REAL MAN INSTEAD OF A MYTH. 535 

written to make the mystery clear ; stand in the right 
position to judge of what is going on, get the relation- 
ship of writer and reader rightly adjusted, fathom the 
secret history and know how much and what part of 
Shakspeare's character is visible in the sonnets. Unfor- 
tunately he wrote them under a very limited liability law 
of relationship. It was not his intention to write of him- 
self, but of his friend. And here, as elsewhere, that 
amazing negative capacity of his has suppressed so much 
that we would have given anything to know. They have 
no introspection. In the most personal of them the eye 
is outward-looking ; it does not brood within for any self 
revelation. 

It must not be thought, however, that we are losing sight 
of Shakspeare's personality whilst eliminating the imper- 
sonal sonnets. We are drawing all the more closely to 
himself. We are getting at him in another way. We 
do not find him quite so melancholy, discontented, and 
morbidly sensitive as many have imagined him, but much 
more like what he is imaged in his other works, and 
pourtrayed in that picture of hilarious health and consti- 
tutional jocundity — the Stratford bust. Our Shakspeare 
of the Sonnets has no reason to plead guilty to abuses of 
kindness and all sorts of inexplicable wilfulness and ingra- 
titude, or to make continual appeal to the loving charity 
which has been drawn upon to the utmost. 

In our reading we find that Shakspeare, in which the 
just soul of the world believes, in spite of appearances 
having been so wrongly interpreted. The Shakspeare 
of those manly qualities to which all the contemporary 
testimony pays tribute. The Shakspeare of whom Chettle 
begs pardon, for the words of Greene, because he has 
found that 'divers of worship,' many of worth, have 
6 reported his uprightness.' The Shakspeare of whom 
Southampton testifies that he is of good reputation, 
deserving of favour, and his especial friend. 



536 ' SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

What we lose sight of is the phantom Shakspeare who 
could ungraciously forget his early friend, to whom he 
had made public promises, given hostages for the future, 
and dedicated love without end ; who could sing of his 
friend's eternal truth, after passionately denouncing his 
falsehood, and talk of locking up his jewel lest it should 
be stolen after it had been filched from him ; who could 
slavishly prostrate himself at the feet of a boy; who 
could hypocritically reprove his friend for his loose con- 
duct and lament his immoralities, whilst he himself, a 
married man of ripe age, was partner with the boy in an 
intrigue with some married woman ; who could accuse 
himself of all sorts of inconsistent things, grow querulous 
at the slightest cause, and ask pity on all kinds of false 
pretences ; who could write sonnets on his own and his 
friend's disgraceful amours, and supply copies to their 
friends for the purpose of raising a laugh at their mutual 
frailty — for such, in defiance of dates, facts, and all that 
we know of our Poet's life and character, or gather 
from his works, is the Shakspeare of Messrs. Boaden and 
Brown's theory of the Sonnets — and we have found the 
real man as he once lived, and loved his friend South- 
ampton, and showed an interest in his passion for 
Elizabeth Yernon ; took sides with them when they were 
thwarted by the caprice of the Queen, and resented it 
very strongly ; made the most ingenious defence, in play 
and in earnest, for his friend ; fought for him against 
• old Time,' and ' evil Fortune,' and ■ all-oblivious en- 
mity ;' laboured to polish his virtues when they rusted, 
and lifted them up shiningly in the eyes of his beloved, 
and strove to shield them from the tarnishing breath of 
scandal ; probably seeing many sad things and having 
many sad thoughts, but holding on to him faithful and 
loving to the end. There is nothing to show that 
his moral supremacy was not absolute as his mental ; 
no grovelling humility of the slavish sort, nothing but 



THE RECOVERED LIKENESS. 537 

that simple modesty which is the natural and perfect 
grace of greatness. Such is the restored likeness of our 
Shakspeare-Portrait which has been shamefully abused 
and far worse daubed over than his bust at Stratford. 
The world will not fail to recognise the truer resem- 
blance and the purer life-colour of this portrait. I 
have also the pleasure of doing justice to the robbed 
and much-wronged Earl of Southampton, the only man 
whom Shakspeare ever inscribed to publicly, and the 
man who really begot the Sonnets of Shakspeare, 
although William Herbert became the ' only obtainer ' 
of them, the ; bringer-forth' for the publishing purpose of 
Thorpe. 

To come to the personal features of our newly-dis- 
covered likeness, we see that the Shakspeare of the Sonnets 
is as wise and practical a man as him of the Globe 
Theatre and the Plays. He did not set out to write son- 
nets on purpose to tell his friend about himself and his 
doings and miss his mark by forgetting to write those 
things which we are all most anxious to know ! 

Incidentally and indirectly he tells us a good deal about 
himself ; and at times we see his very face wearing a 
startling look of life. He tells us how much the friend- 
ship of Southampton was to him during the earlier period 
when he stood in the twilight and could hardly see his 
way clearly. We see how modestly he looked upon his 
own works ; how little he thought of wearing such a 
halo of renown. Whilst making promises of immortality 
for his friend in the sonnets he expresses no hope, no 
consciousness of living on either in them or the plays. 
There is one glance at the Theatre in sonnet 100 (p. 252), 
and he there speaks of his Muse as spending her fury on 
some worthless song, or ballad subject, and darkening her 
power to give the base matter light, instead of writing 
about his friend. 

Once or twice we see him face to face with grief; he 



538 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

conies nestling into our hearts in the lowliest attitude, and 
asserts our common human relationship in the most 
touching way. But, he did not seek to pierce us with 
his own sharp and thorny thoughts ; his object was to 
offer his friend their bloom and fragrancy. And the 
sonnets afford us this self-luminous certainty. Shakspeare 
could not have reproached and reproved Southampton for 
his moral laxity if he had not himself walked uprightly 
under ' awful rule and right supremacy :' could not have 
bewailed the Earl's dwelling in infectious society if his 
own moral health had not been sound. His personal 
bearing must have been blameless for him to express his 
jealousy of evil companions. He could not have dared to 
intimate that his young friend was not one of those who 
are ' lords and owners of their faces ' unless he were 
known to be ' king over himself 

Also we have done for ever with ' William the Melan- 
choly.' Only a very false view of the sonnets could have led 
any one to imagine that Shakspeare was a melancholy 
man. Such a phantasm was begotten on a cloud of the 
brain, and has no existence in reality. It may not always 
have been honestly spoken out, yet it has been inwardly 
believed that his sins confessed in the sonnets were the 
chief cause of his supposed sadness : that the moping, 
abject condition in which he is assumed to have been at 
times, was owing to his misplaced affections and the 
avenging Nemesis that, no doubt, pursued him and 
whipped him back to the wife whom he had deserted. 

This personal interpretation of the sonnets has deepened 
the character of Shakspeare in the mind of many to a 
Eembrancltish depth of shadow, and made Schlegel amongst 
others think that these glimpses of the internal workings 
of the Poet's spirit show it to have been of all others the 
most deeply sorrowful and tragic ! And the critic con- 
cludes that the inmost feelings of the Poet's heart, the 
depths of his peculiar, concentrated and solitary spirit, 



FALSE VIEWS DERIVED FROM THE SONNETS. 539 

could be agitated only by the mournful voice of nature. 
No view could be falser. His soul was not like a star 
that dwelt apart in lonely majesty and cold splendour 
remote from men. Impersonal as he is, we do not feel 
that to be the result of remoteness. Someway we lose 
him from very nearness rather than because of his dis- 
tance from us. Not in isolation, but by a delightful in- 
terfusion does he really pass into invisibility. 

It was said by Mr. Hall am, ' There seems to have 
been a period of Shakspeare's life when his heart was 
ill at ease, and ill content with the world or his own 
conscience : the memory of hours mis-spent, the pang 
of affection misplaced or unrequited, the experience of 
man's worser nature, which intercourse with ill- chosen 
associates, by choice or circumstance, peculiarly teaches 
— these, as they sank down into the depths of his great 
mind, seem not only to have inspired into it the con- 
ception of " Lear" and "Timon," but that of one primary 
character, the censurer of mankind.' So it may have 
seemed, but so it is not in fact. This is but an illusion of 
those who have accepted the sonnets as autobiographic 
revelations. All that is observable is that the great stream 
of his expanding power runs darker with depth, and if 
the searchings into the human heart grow more curious 
and profound, and the tragedy is palled in more awful som- 
breness, and the poetry draws our pleasure with approving- 
tears out of deeper soundings of pain, the comedy is also 
richer and more real, the humour is as smiling as the 
terror is sublime ; there is no unhappy laughter in it, no 
jesting with a sad brow ; whilst the tender images of grace 
and purity are bodied forth more movingly attired than 
ever. We can match ' Hamlet' with the ' Merry Wives,' 
; Lear' with ' Twelfth Night,' and pair off Timon, the hater 
of men, with Cressida and Cleopatra, who were as great 
lovers of them; and his later, most precious creations, Des- 
demona, Cordelia, Virgilia, Perdita, Miranda, Imogen, give 



540 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

no hint of any unsoundness in the Poet's moral nature. 
If he wrote more tragedy as he grew older, that was but 
the natural result of his growing wiser, his meditations on 
life were graver ; the sad-looking bloom had gathered on 
the fuller-ripened life-fruit. What says the prologue to 
King Henry VIII. ?— 

' I come no more to make you laugh ; things now 
That bear a weighty and a serious brow, 
Sad, high and working, full of state and woe, 
Such noble scenes as draw the eye to flow, 
We now present.' 

It is impossible to commune with the spirit of Shakspeare 
in his works and not feel that he was essentially a cheerful 
man and full of healthy gladness, that his royal soul was 
magnificently lodged in a fine physique, and looked out 
on life with a large contentment ; that his conscience was 
clear and his spiritual pulse sober. This is manifest in his 
poems written at an age when most youngsters are wanton 
with sadness. There is no sadness in his first song ; he 
sustains a merry note lustily ; the ' Venus and Adonis,' 
the ' Lover's Complaint,' are brim-full of health ; they 
bespeak the ruddy English heart, the sunbrowned mirth, 
' country quicksilver,' and country cheer. The royal 
blood of his happy health runs and riots in their rural vein. 
It is shown in his hearty and continuous way of working. 
It is proved by his great delight in common human nature, 
and his full satisfaction in the world as he found it. It 
is supremely shown in the nature of his whole work. A 
reigning cheerfulness was the sovereign quality of the man, 
and his art is dedicated to Joy. No one ever did so much 
in the poetic sphere to make men nobly happy. A 
most profound and perennial cheerfulness of soul he must 
have had to bring so bright a smile to the surface, and put 
so pleasurable a colour into the face of human life, which 
never shone more round and rosy than it does in his eyes 
at times ; he who so well knew what an infinite of sorrow 



NOT A MELANCHOLY MAN. 541 

may brood beneath ; what sunless depths of sadness and 
lonely leafless wastes of misery ; who felt so intimately its 
old heartache and pain ; its mystery of evil and all the 
pathetic pangs with which Nature gives birth to Good ! 

The dramatic mood could be troubled, contemplative, 
melancholy, according to his purpose, but the man himself 
was of a happy temperament. A melancholy man must 
have been more self-conscious, and shut up within limits 
indefinitely narrower. 

We may depend upon it that such sunny smiling fruits 
of living as his works offer to us did not spring out of any 
root of bitterness in his own experience ; they are ripe on 
the lower branches as well as on the highest ; are sound 
and sweet to the core, and show no least sign of having 
been gnawn or pierced by the worm that dies not. Had 
he felt sad for himself it would have broken out, if at all, 
not lugubriously, but in a very humorous sadness — the 
diamond-point of wit pricking the gathering tear before it 
was fairly formed, or the drops would have been shaken 
down in a sun-shower. The true Shakspearian sadness is 
more nearly expressed in Mercutio and some of the clowns, 
like the 'fool' in 'Lear, 5 for which he had a special fondness 
and, I fancy, often played the part with zest. Hence the 
humour is just sadness grown honey-ripe ! Beside which, 
we get no suggestion from his contemporaries of a melan- 
choly man. They never saw him in the dumps like John 
Ford. So far as he left any impression on them it was 
that of a gracious and pleasant man, full of good spirits, 
equable at a cheerful height. They certainly saw nothing 
of the social ' outcast ' or the friendless, melancholy man. 
They caught no writhing of the face that indicated the 
devouring secret within his breast ! They never suspected 
that he had gone about ' frantic-mad with evermore un- 
rest.' If so miserable a sinner in private, he must have 
been in public a sad rogue, a rare hypocrite ! Lastly, it 
is impossible to study the bust at Stratford and think of 



542 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

it as the image of a melancholy man. It is the dropped 
mask of a happy-wise spirit, whose pleasantry was so in- 
grained that the mask keeps on smiling after death in 
merry memory of a smiling soul. Looking on this Bust, 
we feel that he must have been a glorious jolly personage, 
in whom the national spirit was most Englishly embodied, 
just as his Works most fully embody the national spirit. 
Thus all the evidence of personal testimony, of work, of 
character, and disposition is arrayed against this modern 
inference that is as false as the sands on which it was 
founded, and we may now let it pass away for ever. 

The sadness of the early sonnets is on behalf of the 
friend for whom he utters so many complaints against 
unkindly Fortune. 

The true personal application of the latter sonnets is, 
not that Shakspeare was gloomy and guilty enough to 
write them for himself, but that he had the exuberant 
jollity, the lax gaiety to write them for the young gallant, 
Herbert. 

There is one thing in the sonnets that brings the man 
very closely home to me. This is his glancing in the 
glass at times to compare his age and looks with those of 
his young friend. No doubt he purposely gives the Earl 
the full difference in opposing Autumn with April, but I 
fancy there was considerable truth in it. So great is my 
belief in the Poet's truth to Nature that I feel he had a 
rough skin and was jocose on the subject — stroking his 
chin in a humorous way, as who should say look at my 
old weather-beaten brown face — ' my glass shows me 
myself indeed, beaten and chapped with tanned anti- 
quity!' And, if as an actor, he kept the chin shaved 
and the beard grew strong and stubby, it would add to 
the roughness. There seems to be a look of this in the 
Droeshout Etching. The 73rd sonnet, which is very 
pathetic, would lead us to suspect that the Poet not only 
thought himself old-looking, but that he also felt prema- 



PERSONAL TRAITS. 543 

turely aged before lie left London for his own native air. 
He had done so much work, and drawn so much on his 
own life ; such ardours had gone out of him. He could 
not have been forty years old, and yet the sonnet paints 
the black bars of the coming night as falling across his 
early sunset path. It is very touching, if we think of it 
as pourtraying our own Shakspeare : — 

i The time of year thou may'st in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare, ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day 
As after sunset fadeth in the west, 
Which by and by black night doth take away, 
Death's second self that seals up all in rest ; 
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire 
That on the ashes of my youth doth lie 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.' 

This has a touch of the yellowish tinge that will come 
over the literary vision at times, when a bit of the best 
work has been lately done. But, as I have before said, 
the tone is as much that of illness as of age. He must 
have recovered health again, and his life put forth a new 
leaf in its Stratford privacy, for he grew some of his 
lustiest evergreens there ; did some of his best work, 
bright with health, and created two of his most loveable 
women, ' Imogen ' and c Perdita,' full of English sweet- 
ness to the core, with the pure breath of his country life 
breathing fragrantly through them. 

From his dramas we may obtain some traits of person- 
ality, and a few facts of Shakspeare's own life. It is very 
interesting to watch the growth of his mind. We can get 
no right estimate of the man unless we do this, and see how 
he worked, and how he waxed in energy and capacity ; 
how, as the stream of his life flowed on, the poetry grows 



544 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

clearer and is purified by time and travel. Shakspeare 
did not come into the world ready-made, nor bringing 
his poetry ready written. Nor does his supereminence 
lie in some unknown, abnormal power of creating poetry 
and adding it to life and nature. He was one of the 
greatest Kealists that ever wrote. He got his poetry out 
of life, and had to begin at the beginning. He must have 
converted everything into force for that rare motion of 
inner life which made the outer music of his poetry. Of 
course he had a most marvellous illumination of the 
seeing eye, a power unparagoned for absorbing know- 
ledge, a nature rich and vital for all the hard actualities 
of fact to unfold in and put forth their loveliest flower ; a 
large and loving spirit that would brood over the meanest 
materials until the influence had passed into them and 
transfigured them past our finding out. And yet this 
man of magnificent resources, so lavish of his wealth, 
must have been a very miser in hoarding up the least 
fruits of life and experience. All life was picture and all 
persons portraiture to him ; every hint would be full of 
meaning, if not to-day, then he would garner it up for 
seed in its season. Dull bits of fact would lie by in the 
grub until he could warm them into life and give them 
wings. When he wrote — ' Let us cast away nothing, for 
we may live to have need of such a verse,' he gave ex- 
pression to a personal trait. 

He relies on reality as the engineer on the rock, but 
his cunning in transforming matter into spirit is alike 
subtle with his art of vanishing from view in his own 
person. When the infinite spaces of his thought are 
spanned and the scaffolding disappears as though all fairy 
world had lent a hand to the labour, and the creation is 
finished like an air-hung work of wonder, it is almost as 
difficult to connect it with the real earth whereon he 
built as it would be to find the bases of the rainbow. The 
way in which he creates for immortality out of the 



EARLY WORK. 545 

veriest dust of the earth, deals divinely witli things most 
grossly mortal, and conjures the loftiest sublimities from 
the homeliest realities, is one of the great Shakspearian 
secrets. As a slight example, see the lines in Macbeth — 

6 The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees 
Is left this vault to brag of ! ' 

Here are Earth and Heaven, Wine-cellar and the concave 
Vast wedded in a word, with one fusing flash of his 
imagination ! But who thinks or dares to think of the 
idea, as first conceived, in the august presence of its 
after-shape ? 

Then, the early works are full of puns and comparisons, 
and overrun with imagery. Here he plays more with 
the shadows of things, and does not reach the utmost 
reality. He played with words, says Eobert Gould, in 
his satire of the 'Playhouse,' to 'please a quibbling age.' 
And we feel that he despised himself for doing so. He 
had no heart in it. The clown, in ' Twelfth Night,' says 
' a sentence is but a Cheveril glove to a good wit ; how 
quick the wrong side maybe turned outward!' The 
reply of Viola shows that Shakspeare felt the habit of 
punning degrading, and that all singleness of language is 
lost in this aiming at witty double meaning : ' Nay, that's 
certain ; they that dally nicely with words, may quickly 
make them wanton.' No bitterer comment was ever 
made on the confirmed habit of jesting with meanings 
and playing with words than he himself supplies in one 
of his early plays, 'Love's Labour's Lost,' where 'my Lord 
Biron ' is told to practise his witticisms for twelve months 
upon the sick and dying in an hospital, and make the 
'pained impotent to smile.' 

The early plays contain the ' spring and foison ' of 
Shakspeare's poetic life, overrunning with leafy richness 
and the luxuriant undergrowth of his poetry. And how 
the stature and strength of his work increases year by 



546 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

year, striking root yet deeper and broader in English 
earth, but lifting up its stately branches into airy regions. 
What a growth from the ' Two Gentlemen of Verona ' 
to ■ Lear ; ' from the slender sapling to the tree whose 
girth we may not span ! We can see how his expression 
chastens and grows sublime with simplicity ; rich with the 
most precious plainness of speech. We may see also in 
his early plays what were his personal relations to the 
England of that memorable time which helped to mould 
him : see how the war stirred his nature to its roots, and 
made them clasp England with all their fibres : we may 
see how he fought the Spaniard in feeling, and helped to 
shatter their armadas. We learn how these things made 
him turn to his country's history, and pourtray its past 
and exalt its heroes in the eyes of Englishmen. How 
often does he show them the curse of civil strife, and read 
them the lesson that England is safe so long as she is 
united ! Thus he lets us know how true an Englishman 
he was ; how full of patriotic fire and communicative 
warmth. 

The rest of the world are welcome to prove him a 
cosmopolitan ; but we know where his nationality lies. 
He was a dear lover of this dear land of ours. He 
loved her homely face, and took to his heart her 'tight 
little ' form, that is so embraceable ! He loved her 
tender glory of green grass, her grey skies, her miles on 
miles of apple-bloom in spring time, her valleys brim-full 
of the rich harvest-gold in autumn ; her leafy lanes and 
field-paths, and lazy, loitering river-reaches ; her hamlets 
nestling in the quiet heart of rural life ; her scarred old 
Gothic towers and mellow red-brick chimneys with their 
Tudor twist, and white cottages peeping through the 
roses and honeysuckles. We know how he loved his 
own native woods and wild flowers, the daisy, the prim- 
rose, the wild honeysuckle, the cowslip, and most of all, 
the violet. This was his darling of our field flowers. 



HIS PATRIOTISM. 547 

And most lovingly has he distilled or expressed the spirit 
of the violet into one of his sweetest women, and called her 
Viola ! His favourite birds also are the common homely 
English singing birds, the lark and nightingale, the 
cuckoo and blackbird that sang to Shakspeare in his 
childhood and still sing to-day in the pleasant woods of 
Warwickshire. He loved all that we call and prize as 
6 so English.' He loved the heroes whom he saw round 
him in every-day life, the hardy, bronzed mariners that 
he saw go sailing 'Westward, Ho :' Indeed, the mention 
of England's name oners one of our best opportunities for 
a personal recognition ; when an English thought has 
struck him, how he brands the ' mark of the lion ' on his 
lines ! 

There are times when he quite overruns the speech of 
a character with the fulness of his own English feeling. 
In one or two instances this is very striking ; for example, 
in that speech of old Gaunt's in ' Eichard H.,' at the 
name of England the writer is off, and cannot stop. His 
own young blood leaps along the shrunken veins of grave 
and aged Gaunt ; Shakspeare's own heart throbs through 
the whole speech ; the dramatic mask grows transparent 
with the light of his own kindled face, and you know it 
is Shakspeare's own features behind ; his own voice that 
is speaking. A fact that he had forgotten for the 
moment, because Nature w r as sometimes too strong for 
his earlier art. Again, we have but to read the speech 
of King Harry V., on the night, or rather the dawn, 
of Agincourt, to feel how keen was the thrill of Shak- 
speare's proud patriotism. Harry was a hero after our 
Poet's own English heart, and he takes great delight in 
such a character. His thoughts grow proud and jolly ; 
his eyes fill, his soul overflows, and there is a riot of life 
which takes a large number of lines to quell! That 
' little touch of Harry in the night ' gives us a flash of 
Shakspeare in the light. 



548 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

As he gets older and more perfect in his way of 
working, either his unconsciousness of self increases or 
else he grows more cunning in his concealment. 

He was a sturdy out-spoken Englishman, too. See the 
character he draws of Henry VIII. ; and hear him plead 
the cause of Catherine, when thinking that the King's 
daughter Elizabeth was to be one of the listeners, and 
knowing that it was her mother who had taken the poor 
Queen's place whilst it was yet warm with her late presence. 
He had an eye very keenly alive to the least movement 
of the national life. When the new map of England is 
published he takes immediate note of it. Maria, in 
' Twelfth Night,' says, ' He does smile his face into more 
lines than are in the new map with the augmentation of 
the Indies. 1 And when the two crowns of England and 
Scotland are united in the person of James, Shakspeare 
alters the old doggrel, — 
' Fi, fo ! fum ! 
I smell the blood of an Englishman,' 

into 

' I smell the blood of a British man.' l 

for which the Scotch take him closer to heart, and give 
him an additional hug ! 

He was undoubtedly monarchical in feeling, and had 
great loyalty to what we call the Constitution. But he 
looked more to the joints of the armour of our national 
life than to any special piece of it. He was a great 
upholder of the country's honour, and seems to have sus- 
pected that the trading classes might not prove the truest 
bearers of the banner. He may have foreseen the modern 
tendency to a dry-rot in the commercial spirit. What 
he thought of the mob we may read in Jack Cade's 
rising. He treats it rather like Marshal Lobau with his 
fire-engine. He has especial delight in all the nobilities 

1 His friend the Earl of Southampton had been one of the Commissioners 
appointed in 1603 for an Union betwixt England and Scotland. 



HIS CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 549 

of nature and the personal influence of aristocracy. He 
may not have 'been what is called a ' professing ' Chris- 
tian, but he was a most practical one. He had the root 
of the matter in him. We might apply to him his own 
description of Benedick — 'The man doth fear God, 
howsoever it seems not in him by some large jests he will 
make' 

Coleridge says rightly there is not one really vicious 
passage in all Shakspeare. There are coarse things, for 
the customs and language of the time were coarse. But 
there is nothing rotten at the root, nothing insidious in 
the suggestion. Vice never walks abroad in the mental 
twilight wearing the garb of virtue. You hear the voices 
of Wrong and Eight, Truth and Error in his works, but 
there is no confusion of tongues for the confounding of 
the sense. He has no softness for sentimental sinners, 
lets down no drawbridge at the last moment to help them 
over the dark gulf. His lines are drawn as sharply as 
the scriptural decree that the tree shall lie where it falls. 

He has infinite pity for the suffering and struggling and 
wounded by the way. The most powerful and pathetic 
pleadings on behalf of Christian charity out of the New 
Testament have been spoken by Shakspeare. He takes 
to his large, warm heart much that the world usually casts 
out to perish in the cold. There is nothing too poor or 
too mean to be embraced within the circle of his sym- 
pathies. He sees the germ of good in that which looks 
all evil to the careless passers-by, for his eyes are large 
with love and have its ' precious seeing.' If there be only 
the least little redeeming touch in the most abandoned cha- 
racter he is sure to point it out ; he recognises the slightest 
glimpse of the Divine Image in the rudest human clay- 
cast. If there is one word to be said for some poor, 
helpless wretch, he urges it to arrest the harsh judgment 
and waken a kindly thought. If there be but one solitary 
spark of virtue in the dark heart of the world's worst 



550 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

outcast, he reveals it with such a sigh of pity as seems 
to kindle it into larger life. He must have been a 
good man to have mirrored this round of human life so 
faithfully and yet so kindly. After all, it is the best 
hearts that are the truest mirrors even of this world, 
for it is God's world, bad as we have managed to 
make it. The worst men give forth an image distorted 
into the devil's likeness. Shakspeare does not believe 
that it is the devil's world. In spite of the many sad and 
sorry sights that we have to look on, with human souls 
so often weltering in the mire, and Apollyon driving over 
them with the wheels of his triumphal car, he knows that 
the devil is not going to win the final victory. 

What a large and all- including kindliness of soul he has ! 
His charity is like- the sun that smiles on the just and the 
unjust. His luminous smile falls on the weed as well as 
the flower, the thistle as well as the palm-tree, the poor 
hovel as well as the palace-home. It lights the jewels of 
the hero's crown, and it lets the veriest motes dance in its 
sunbeams. He does not fly into a passion with stupidity, 
or ignorance, or pretention. He knows how large a part 
these play in the natural scheme of things ; that they are 
fathers of families and respectable householders, and get 
represented in parliament He looks on many sights 
which put the little ardent folk out of temper with his 
calm, slow, wise smile, as though he would say, ' If God 
can put up with all these queer creatures and ignoramuses, 
and simulations of human beings in his scheme of creation, 
there is no reason why I should fume and fret, or denounce 
them, or argue with them. He finds room for them all 
in his plan ; I'll make a place for them in mine.' And no 
botanist ever culled his rarest specimens more lovingly 
than Shakspeare his samples of what some might Pharisai- 
cally call ' God's own unaccountables.' How he listens 
to the long-winded garrulousness of the ignorant, whether 
simple or knowing. Pearls might be dropping from its 



HIS LARGE TOLERATION. 551 

lips, or about to drop from them. He does not say let no 
dog bark, or donkey bray in my presence. Contrariwise, 
lie likes to hear what they have to say for themselves, 
draws them out, and sometimes fools them to the top of 
their bent. It is as though he thought Nature had her 
precious secrets hidden here as elsewhere, and with suffi- 
cient patience we should find it all out, if we only watched 
and waited impartially. See the generous encouragement 
he gives to Dogberry ! How he draws him out, and makes 
much of him. You would say he was c enamoured of an 
ass.' But perhaps the glory of all his large toleration 
shines out in his treatment of that ' sweet bully' Bottom. 
Observe how he heaps the choicest gifts and showers the 
rarest freaks of Fortune around that ass's head. All the 
wonders of fairy-land are revealed, all that is most ex- 
quisitely dainty and sweet in poetry is scattered about his 
feet. Airy spirits of the most delicate loveliness are his 
ministers. The Queen of Fairy is in love with him. He 
is told how beautiful he is in person, how angelic is his 
voice. And Bottom accepts it all with the most sublime 
stolidity of conceit. There is a self-possession of ignor- 
ance that Shakspeare himself could not upset, although 
he seems to delight in seeing how far it could go. Nick 
Bottom has no start of surprise, no misgiving of sensitive- 
ness, no gush of gratitude, no burst of praise. He is as 
calm in his Ass-head as Jove in his Godhead. Shak- 
speare knew how often blind Fortune will play the part 
of Titania, and lavish all her treasures and graces on some 
poor conceited fool, and feed him with the honey-bag of 
the bee, and fan him with the wings of butterflies, and 
light him to bed with glow-worm lamps, and the Ass 
will still be true to his nature, and require his ' peck of 
provender.' 

If ever old Time had a conqueror in this world, or 
found a match in mortal mind, it is in William Shakspeare ; 
and it is exceedingly interesting to notice what a sense 



552 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

our Poet has of the power of his grim antagonist. He 
appears to watch him at his work, he measures his prowess, 
he taunts him, and flings hard names at him. Allied to 
this feeling of Shakspeare's is a profound sense of mortality. 
Not only has he the natural shrinking of ripe physical life 
from the cold clutch of the bony skeleton, and the wormy 
embrace of the grave, but he has been accused of a ten- 
dency to consider the secrets of the grave and of decay 
' too curiously ; ' to moralize over a mouldering bone until 
he is compelled to fling it down with the revulsion of 
feeling. This is remarkable in so healthy a man. I can- 
not help coupling with it the fact that Shakspeare was 
born in the 'year of the plague' at Stratford : he must, 
therefore, have sucked in a strange influence with his 
mother's milk — a kind of mysterious sense of death, and 
danger, and pestilence. And, no doubt, the tales of terror 
which would be told to the child would create an unde- 
finable horror in his mind — ' Things,' as he says, ' that to 
hear them told have made me tremble.' Besides which, 
the heap of bones that was piled so high in the charnel- 
house at Stratford would be sure to draw the boy to look 
in upon it with a fearful fascination. Some such ghostly 
memory seems to haunt him at times when he stands 
near the grave or speaks of the charnel. This reaches its 
climax in those lines written for his tombstone, which lines 
were possibly written on account of their local application. 

6 Grood friend, for Jesu's sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here : 
Blest be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones.' 

This, however, which does not amount to a tendency, has 
been vastly exaggerated by the personal theory of the 
sonnets. After all, it is Hamlet who discourses in the 
graveyard, not Shakspeare. 

We may also find in our Poet an appalling sense of 



HIS SENSE OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 553 

the supernatural, the nearness of the spirit world, and 
its power to break in on the world of flesh when 
nature prays for help, or darkly conspires to let it in ! 
His working province was the world of human life. 
His was the ' sphere of humanity;' the real work-a-day 
world. As a dramatist he had to give that life a 
palpable embodiment in flesh and blood, and endow 
it with speech and action. But he knew that human 
nature was made of spirit as well as flesh, and that it is 
under the ' skiey influences.' What an illustration of this 
is the teaching of Borneo's life and death ! It is a perfect 
dramatising of St. Paul's saying, ' the good which I would, 
I do not ! and the evil which I would not, that I do,' 
When he is the cause of his friend Mercutio's death, he 
' thought all for the best ; ' he meant well, and such is the 
end of our well-meaning so often ! 

It seems to me that one great reason why 'Hamlet' 
will always remain so perplexing a study to those who 
seek to divine Shakspeare's intentions, is because his 
characters are so much a part of nature as to include the 
supernatural ; and, in this case, whatsoever ' Hamlet ' pro- 
poses, Shakspeare shows us it is Fate, as we say, which 
disposes. It is not Hamlet who finds the solution of his 
problem of life and death : it is Fate that catches him up 
in its surer grasp and swifter execution, so that when the 
final crash comes, Hamlet is one of the most weak and 
helpless victims in the higher hands. Divine laws over- 
ride our human wishes. The innocent suffer alike with 
the guilty, and things do not come about as they were 
forecast. Thus it is in life ! And so it is in Shakspeare. 
This makes the tragedy. He knew that there was a 
Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may. 
He feels that this human life is all very wonderful in its 
play of passions, its pleasures and its pains, with all their 
crossings and conflicting lights and shadows, and he does 
what he can to shed a little light on the vast mystery* 



554 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

But he feels how small is this little island of our human 
life, set in the surrounding ocean of eternity, and how 
limited is the light that he can throw upon it and upon 
the darkness that hems us in! He knows there is an 
unfathomable sea where we can find no footing. We 
must swim if we are to keep up at all. In common with 
the rest of the universe, we have to repose upon unseen 
foundations. We cannot ignore the spirit-world, and if 
we do not get help from it, we are pretty sure to get 
hindrance. For example, in ; Macbeth,' Shakspeare shows 
us that looking, longing, irresolute mood of mind, which 
is the Devil's especial delight, because with such he is 
quite sure of a nibble for his bait. Here we have the 
perfect type of the wavering, undecided soul that will 
peer, very cautiously of course, over the perilous precipice 
in such a way, that the Weird Sisters are evoked from the 
shadowy gulf below, and in such a tempting, balancing 
attitude, that it is much more easy for the Devil to steal 
behind and topple the peering spirit over. Nor did he 
create and people his world of spirits by merely collecting 
the shreds and patches of tradition, but from the vita- 
lizing life of his own belief ; the faith that is an effluent 
shaping power. 

The more we study the works of Shakspeare, the more 
we shall feel how natural piety made a large part of the 
cheerful sunshine that smiles out in his philosophy of life. 
And in great emergencies we may see the flash of a re- 
ligious feeling large enough for life, and deep enough for 
death. How frank and bold, for example, is that expres- 
sion of trust in the Divine when Banquo, encompassed by 
dangers, exclaims — 

( In the great hand of Grod I stand ! ' 

And when the fatal presentiment, which Shakspeare so 
often recognises, comes over Hamlet, what does he say ? 
4 Thou knowest not Horatio, how ill all is here about my 



HIS NATURAL PIETY. 555 

heart : but there is a special Providence even in the fall 
of a sparrow.' What a world of meaning there is in the 
confession of that rogue ' Autolycus ' — giving us his view 
of spiritual matters ! — ' as for the life to come, I sleep out 
the thought of it.' Frequent and fervent is the appeal to 
the world hereafter, that is to make the ' odds ' of this 
' all even,' and to Him who is the ' top of justice,' and his 
' eternal justicers.' Eeverence, he calls ' that Angel of 
the world.' How tender, gracious, reverential, grows his 
language in Hamlet at the mention of our Saviour's birth ; 
enough to show that he had the true flavour of that quaint 
Elizabethan piety and touching sense of the human per- 
sonality of our Saviour, which led Dekkar to describe him 
as the ' first true gentleman that ever breathed,' and old 
Sylvanus Morgan to give coat armour to c gentleman 
Jesus,' as he called him in his ' Sphere of Gentry.' ! 

Let us turn once more to that noble sonnet (146), in 
which he gives the gay young gallant the solemn address 
to his soul, and which really is the writer's own comment 
on the subject, embodying the essence of a thousand ser- 
mons in a work only meant for amusement, conveying, at 
the same time, the loftiest rebuke to those who have in- 
sulted the great spirit with their gross sense. 

e Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth — 
My sinful earth these rebel powers array — 
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth ; 
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay ? 

1 Morgan, however, is indebted to Dame Juliana Berners for the expres- 
sion. In her Treatise on Coat Armour she calls the ' gentyl Jesus Cryst ' 
a ' gentleman of his mother's behalf.' According to this authority, ' Seth/ 
the son of Adam, was a gentleman born, ' through his Father's and Mother's 
blessing,' which is a departure from the code of the 'Book of Honour' 
(1590, quarto), wherein a Gentleman means one who has descended from 
three degrees of Gentry, both on the Father's and Mother's side. Shak- 
speare has his joke on this subject, There is an allusion in 'King Lear' to 
a ' Yeoman who has a Gentleman to his son,' almost unintelligible except on 
personal grounds ; and another in the t Winter's Tale,' where the Clown says 
he was 'a Gentleman before his father.' It looks as though Shakspeare did 



556 SHAKSPEAEE'S SOXNETS. 

Why so large cost, having so short a lease, 
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend ?' 
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, 
Eat up thy charge ? Is this the body's end ? 
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, 
And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; 
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ; 
Within be fed, without be rich no more, 

So shalt thou feed on Death that feeds on men, 
And Death once dead, there's no more dying then.' l 

But, it is not in hints and allusions like these that I 
would seek for evidence of Shakspeare's religious feeling, 
or we might multiply them, so much as in his dumb 
appeal to such feelings as are left vibrating when some 
great tragedy of his is over. It plainly appears to me 
that amidst all the storms of life in which humanity may 
be wrecked, the horror of great darkness in which the 
powers of evil prevail, the misery and madness and mid- 
night homelessness of poor, witless, white-headed old 
Lear, with his blindness of trust and broken-heartedness 
of love, Shakspeare knows right well where there is peace 
beyond the tempest. Strange glhnpses lighten through 
the rents of ruin. He sees the waves roll on, and life 
buffeted and tossed with the turmoil, and all the agony of 
sinking hearts and outstretched hands ; but he also sees 
the unmoving Eternity, and the 'so long impossible' rest. 
He knows well enough where the compensations lie for 
the great dumb love of Cordelia, which could not get 
expression in life. He knew of all the love in the hearts 
of father and child, which would take an eternity to fully 
unfold ; and where could he pillow it with more infinite 
sup;o;estiveness than beside the grave ? It is for us to see 



'CD 



refer to his "being a Gentleman on the Mother's side, whereas his Father was 
only a Franklin. Very possibly this was a standing joke in tlie Shakspeare 
family. 

1 'Neither can they die any more. For Death, the last enemy, is 
destroyed.' 



FINAL APPEAL OF HIS TRAGEDY. 557 

what is dimly visible through that dark window of the 
other world ! He has said his say — let the rest be told 
in silence ! And the soul must be dull indeed whose 
sight has not been purged and feeling purified for the 
loftier vision on the spiritual stage. Our interest does 
not cease when the drama is ended. ' To be continued ' 
is plainly written at the close of its fifth act. The heart- 
ache which he has given us demands and draws the other 
world near for very pity and comfort. You cannot help 
looking up from amid the shadows of the dark valley to 
where the light is breaking overhead, and feel a touch of 
those immortal relationships which live beyond the 
human. Let no one suppose that Shakspeare's genius, 
being of such stature as it was, could not rise up and 
'take the morning' that lies beyond this night of time 
where bewildered souls so often get beclouded. The fixed 
calm of his eye, and the patient smile almost hovering 
about his lips, with which he is able to contemplate the 
workings of error and evil, and the victories of adverse 
fate, imply his trust in that revelation which has called in 
the New World of Christianity to redress the wrong mea- 
sures and false balances of the Old. Thus all the action 
of his tragedy, though confined to human life and this 
round of time, has a reacting and enriching influence 
from the touch of other worlds. The sea of life and its 
tides of passion, moved to the depths, do not merely 
throw two dead bodies on the shore ; there are also 
souls at rest, with a radiance on the ripple such as makes 
the dark deeps beautiful. All this is natural result. It 
was not Shakspeare's place as a writer of tragedy to 
frighten us and then say something for our comfort. He 
points no moral, winds up with no sermon. It is his 
work to create interest, to quicken sympathy and enlarge 
life ; the rest follows. He knew how much Nature will 
work for her favourites, and he was her own best 
favourite, so he has only to set her well at work and 



558 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

quietly steal away, leaving Nature to finish. In this re- 
spect his negative power is as great and surprising as the 
positive capacity : what he does not do is often as 
remarkable and effective as what he does ! 

Great tragedy works some of its deepest effects 
dumbly. It gives us a more significant version of that 
sentiment — 

c Silence in love bewrays more woe 
Than words tho' ne'er so witty ; 
A beggar that is dumb, you know, 
May challenge double pity.' 

So is it with the final appeal of Shakspeare's ; and though 
it leaves you gazing with streaming eyes on those two 
dead lovers in the dim vault at Verona, yet has he suc- 
ceeded in creating such a swelling spirit within you, put 
such a breath of the eternal into your sad sigh that the 
soul mounts into majesty and reigns and rules high above 
the region of storms, where the spirits of those immortal 
lovers shall live their married life and part no more. 

He was indeed the ' priest to all time of the wonder 
and bloom of the world which he saw with his eyes and 
was glad.' By all the forces of inner nature and outer 
circumstance he was broadened to embrace human life 
rather than narrowed to strike up keenly into the region 
of abstract speculation. The fruit himself of a ripe time, 
in him general humanity reaches its ripeness. 'Bipe- 
ness is all,' he says, in ' Lear,' and in a sense this ripeness 
was all to him ; he leaves the fruit where it falls. But, 
he knew, none better, that the ripeness contained the seed 
of life hereafter ; and ' ripeness ' with him means readi- 
ness. He was the very spirit of the sense personified, but 
no positive philosopher who is put out by a Providence 
— the incalculable force that for ever expands dead law 
with breathing life ! And he always makes room for 
this in his dramatic arrangements ; catches the awful 



HTS RETIREMENT FROM THE STAGE. 559 

whisper of the Infinite ; is conscious of its weird watching 
eyes, and its horizon of mystery. If we cannot get at the 
Man Shakspeare then, we can get at the Philosopher, and 
this was just the most natural of philosophers ; the spirit 
of the man shines through all his philosophy. It is a 
folly to talk about the little we know of Shakspeare, 
when with a vitalizing spirit of research we might learn 
so much ! 

It is pleasant to think of our great Poet so amply reap- 
ing the fruits of his industry and prudence early in life, and 
spending his calm latter days in the old home of his boy- 
hood which he had left a-foot and come back to in the 
saddle. The date of his retirement from London cannot 
be determined. I am decidedly of opinion that it was 
before the publication of the sonnets, in 1609, and other 
circumstances seem to indicate that he was living at Strat- 
ford, in 1608, in the August of which year he sued 
Addenbroke ; on the 6th of September, his Mother was 
buried ; and, on the 16th of October, he was sponsor at 
the baptism of Henry Walker's son. Here, again, the 
Southampton letter agrees exactly with the other evi- 
dence in pointing out the year 1608 as the time at which 
the Poet finally ceased to be an actor. 

He had the feeling, inexpressibly strong with English- 
men, for owning a bit of this dear land of ours and living in 
one's own house ; paying rent to no man. We know how 
he clung to his native place all through his London life, 
strengthening his rootage there all the while. We learn 
how he went back once a year to the field-flowers of 
his childhood to hear in the leaves the whispers of 
Long- Ago and ' get some green ' — as Chaucer says — 
where the overflowing treasure of youth had, dew-like, 
given its glory to the grass, its freshness to the flower, 
and climb the hills up which the boy had run, and loiter 
along the lanes where he had courted his wife as they 
two went slowly on the way to Shottery, and the boy 



560 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

thought Anne Hathaway very fair whilst lingering in the 
tender twilight, and the honeysuckles smelled sweet in 
the dusk, and the star of love shone and shook with 
tremulous splendour, and Willie's arm was round her, 
and in their eyes would glisten the dews of that most 
balmy time. 

We might fancy, too, that on the stage, when he was 
playing some comparatively silent part, his heart would 
steal away and the audience melt from before his face, as he 
wandered back to where the reeds were sighing by Avon 
stream, and the Nightingale was singing in the Wier-brake 
just below Stratford Church, and the fond fatherly heart 
took another look at the grave of little Hamnet — patting it, 
as it were, with an affectionate 'Come to you, little one, by 
and by, 7 and the play was like an unsubstantial pageant 
faded in the presence of that scenery of his soul. 

Only we know what a practical fellow he was, and if 
any such thought came into his mind it would be put 
back with a ' lie thou there, Sweetheart,' and he would 
have addressed himself more sturdily than ever to the 
business in hand. 

At last he had come back to live and write ; die and 
be buried at home. He had returned to the old place 
laden with honours and bearing his sheaves with him ; 
wearing the crown invisible to most of his neighbours, 
but having also such possessions as they could appreciate. 
They looked up to him now, for the son of poor John 
Shakspeare, the despised deer-stealer and player, had 
become a most respectable man, able to spend 500/. or 
so a year amongst them. He could sit under his own 
vine, and watch the ongoings of country life whilst 
waiting for the sunset of his own ; nestle in the bosom of 
his own family, walk forth in his own fields, plant his 
mulberry-tree, compose several of his noblest dramas, and 
ripen for his rest in the place where he had climbed for 
birds'-nests, and, as they say, poached for deer by moon- 



FELLOW TOWNSMEN. 5§1 

light. I think he must have enjoyed it all vastly. He 
entered into local plans, and astonished his fellow-towns- 
men by his business habits. And they would like 
him too, if only because he was so practical by habit, so 
English in feeling. We know that he fought on their 
side in resisting an encroachment upon Welcomb Com- 
mon. He 'could not bear the enclosing of Welcomb,' 
he said. We feel, however, that as he moved amongst 
these honest, unsuspecting folk, with so grave and douce 
a face, he must have had internal ticklings at times, and 
quite enough to do to keep quiet those sprites of mirth 
and mischief lurking in the corners of his mouth and in 
the twinkle of his eyes as he thought how much capital 
he had made out of them, and how he had taken their 
traits of character to market, and turned them into the 
very money to which his fellow-townsmen were so 
respectful now. 

The few facts that we get of Shakspeare's life at Strat- 
ford are very homely, and one or two of his footprints 
there are very earthy ; but they tell us it was the foot of 
a sturdy, upright, matter-of-fact Englishman, such as will 
find a firm standing-place even in the dirt, and it corre- 
sponds to the bust in the Church at Stratford. Both 
represent, though coarsely, that yeoman side of his nature 
which would be most visible in his everyday dealings 
with men. For example, we learn that in August, 1608, 
he brought an action against John Addenbroke for the 
recovery of a debt. The verdict was in his favour, but 
the defendant had no effects. Shakspeare then proceeded 
against Thomas Horneby, who had been bail for Adden- 
broke. We cannot judge of the humanity of the case. 
The law says the Poet was right. But, by this we may infer 
that Shakspeare had learned to look on the world in too 
practical a way to stand any nonsense. He would be 
abused, no doubt, for making anybody cash up that owed 
him money. There would be people who had come to 





562 SHAKSPEARE'S SONJNETS. 

argue that a player had no prescriptive or natural right to 
be prudent and thrifty, or exact in money transactions. 
Shakspeare thought differently. He had to deal with 
many coarse and pitiful facts of human life ; and this he 
had learned to do in a strong, effectual way. There 
would be a good deal of coarse, honest prose even in 
Shakspeare, but no sham poetry of false sentimentality. 
"What he had made up his mind to do, he would do 
thoroughly. He was a man of business, and why should 
he not apply their own laws to the Medes and Persians of 
money ? 

We get a fact curiously illustrative of Shakspeare's 
domestic life from the Chamberlain's accounts of the year 
1614 :— 

6 Item, for one quart of sack, and one quart of clarett winne, 
given to a preacher at the New Place, XXcL' 

It has been suggested, that the Poet may have lent his 
house for the occasion, as he himself could have had little 
sympathy with a Puritan preacher. But it would be very 
ungracious, not to say unfair, to suppose that Shakspeare 
lent his house for the entertainment, and took himself off 
whilst the wine was drinking. This entry affords a most 
interesting subject for conjecture. If we take it in another 
aspect, is it not strange that the Puritan preacher should 
have been located at the house of a player and playwright? 
Por this, I think, is one of the earliest, if not the first, 
instances of such an entry. Possibly the connexion was 
through Shakspeare's daughter, Susanna, who may have 
lived at New Place. Her epitaph tells of her being ' wise 
to salvation,' and a good Christian. I do not suppose that 
the Poet took much personal interest in the matter, doc- 
trinally. He was not the man to be lightly caught up and 
his wits set waltzing by every or any circling cyclone that 
might gyrate over a small tract of the national mind. But 
he was the kindly Christian to open his house to a man 



PLAYWRIGHT AND PURITAN. 563 

whom others of his local standing might feel shy of. It 
is my belief however, that Shakspeare entertained the 
preacher just for the fun of the thing ; a great part of 
the fun being the serious interest shown by his good 
daughter, the best of it all being Susanna's consternation 
when the Poet had drawn out the old Adam of the 
Preacher's carnal man, with his own chirruping canary 
wine, and charming talk, and roguish twinkle of wit, and 
she was called upon to lend a hand in helping to gather 
up the fragments of her broken idol, by getting him off 
to bed. For it is my settled conviction, that those two 
quarts of wine and sack were not the only ones drank in 
fc New Place,' that night. If that Puritan were not one of 
the sourest-blooded then going, we may conclude that he 
ripened in the sunny presence of his host ; and the godly 
man never knew how much wine he had taken, if the 
Corporation knew what they had to pay for. Shakspeare 
must have had the very soul of hospitality. He kept open 
house and open heart for troops of friends, and loved to 
enfranchise and set flying the ' dear prisoned spirits of the 
impassioned grape ; ' many a time was his broad silver 
and gilt bowl set steaming ; his smile of welcome beamed 
like the sun through mist ; his large heart welled with 
humanity, and overflowed with good fellowship ; his talk 
brightened the social circle with ripple after ripple of 
radiant humour. And who can doubt that he was ' at 
home ' to a friend of Mistress Hall ; sat in his own seat, 
and presided at his own board and bowl ? 

The tradition runs, that he caught his death through, 
leaving his bed when ill, because some of his old friends 
and playfellows had called upon him for a carouse. He 
was quite unselfish enough for that ; also too wise. The 
probability is that he died very suddenly of a fever. 

And what was this man like in person when he walked 
our world ? Thackeray has said that he would have liked 
to have blacked Shakspeare's shoes, just to have looked 



5G4 SHAKSPEABE'S SONNETS. 

up into his face. We would give a great deal for a genuine 
carte of his visit here ! Next to looking on the face of 
him who spake ' as never man spake/ one would like to 
have seen the living lineaments of him who wrote as 
never man wrote ; who contained such huge intellectual 
forces, and vast possibilities of being ; so prodigal a fulness 
of life, and so Protean a plasticity of power, that he could 
body forth in his works, characters enough to people a 
world, and render a fair representation of our race : the man 
who made the Map of Humanity — he whose nature con- 
tained the awful rage of such a tempest of power as that 
in which the reason of old Lear is wrecked, on such a night 
of storm — the pathos of Lear's poor loveable, fond Fool — 
the grace of Ariel, and grotesqueness of Caliban — the chi- 
valry of Henry V., the wit of Mercutio, the sweetbriar 
pungency of pretty peerless Perdita — and all those ' gra- 
cious silences,' and low-voiced loveable women, few of 
whom we shall meet upon our pilgrimage here, but which 
will be preserved, we may well imagine, as patterns to be 
copied from in other lives to come, and yet untrodden 
worlds, with the chance of our meeting them hereafter ! 
What a life it must have been, when all his characters 
only reveal something of it in shadowy imagery, the pic- 
tures on the walls ! What a Spirit ! When the ' Works of 
Shakspeare ' are but the leafage and bloom it shed during 
its season of time on earth ! if such be the foliage and 
bloom that have fallen from it, what must the fruit be 
that still ripens on for eternity ? 

I take it that the Droeshout Etching roughly gives us 
the Poet in his mid-manhood, and the Stratford Bust the 
grander man, who created Lady Macbeth, Lear, Timon, 
Othello, and Prospero, but smacking more of the jollity 
of his country life. Mr. Dyce observes that the Bust ex- 
hibits the Poet in the act of composition, and enjoying, as 
it were, the richness of his own conceptions. 

A happy remark in illustration of Shakspeare's smile 



THE STRATFORD BUST. 565 

was made by K. B. Hay don in a note of his, written 
June loth, 1828, in the album kept at Stratford Church. 
Speaking of the bust, he says, ' The forehead is fine as 
Raphael's or Bacon's, and the form of the nose and ex- 
quisite refinement of the mouth, with its amiable, genial 
hilarity of wit and good nature, so characteristic, unideal, 
bearing truth in every curve, with a little bit of the teeth 
showing at the moment of smiling, which must have been 
often seen by those who had the happiness to know Shak- 
speare, and must have been pointed out to the sculptor as 
necessary to likeness when he was dead. n 

These two, the etching and bust, are sufficient for us to 
re-create our Shakspeare as a man of sturdy build, with a 
royal head and large lineaments. The hair of a warm 
brown, and the beard somewhat more golden ; a man, 
not made out of cheeseparings and heeltaps, but full of 
ripe life and cordial spirits and concentrated energy ; with 
eyes to be felt by those whom they looked on ; such eyes 
as see most things without the head turning about ; a full 
mouth, frank and brave, and richly humorous, capable 
of giving free utterance to the laugh that would ring out 
of the manly chest with all his heart in it. But there are 
lines in the face, and the forehead is not quite so smooth 
as we have been accustomed to see in his portraits ; the 
hair is waxing thinner ; the beard growing grizzled. It is a 
face that would look weather-beaten in the country, and 
dusky in London ; being something coarse in the grain. 
Not without bodily waste have the wear of life and work, 
and the touch of time, shaped out the statue of such a 
mighty soul ! And, on the whole, we imagine that had it 
been possible to have met our Poet in the streets of Strat- 
ford, and looked on him as he lived, aged about fifty, we 
should have been disappointed with his general appear- 
ance. To us he is all immortal now ; and we should be 
looking for the halo, the garland, and the singing-robes 

1 Shakspeare Society' 's Papers, vol. ii. p. 10. 



566 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

about him, but we should find a man who wore good 
sound boots on his feet — not sandals — and a hat pulled 
rather tightly down over his magnificent brow. He would 
not hold the lyre in his hand, and no wings would have 
sprung at his shoulders. He might be carrying samples 
of corn, and meditating the price current, or congratula- 
ting himself on having sold his shares before the Globe 
Theatre was burned down. We must have attained a 
most uncommon mastery of the sordid and fleshly facts of 
human existence before we could possibly recognise our 
Poet, If told that this was the man, he would not be our 
Shakspeare. Him we should still have to seek in his 
works. 

His sudden death after so recent a record of his ' per- 
fect health,' is quite in keeping with our idea of the man 
Shakspeare, who was the very image of Life incarnate. 
Such a death best embodies such an immortal spirit of 
life ; gives the finishing touch, and leaves us an image 
in the mortal sphere, almost as consummate and un- 
decaying as is the shape of immortality put on by him 
in the realm of Mind. He went with his powers full- 
summed ; his faculties in full lustre ; his fires unquenched, 
his sympathies unsubdued. There was no returning tide 
of an ebbing manhood, but the great ocean of his fife, 
that had gathered its wealth from a thousand springs, rose 
to the perfect height, touched the complete circle, and 
in its spacious fulness was still. 



APPENDIX 



509 



APPENDIX A. 



CUPID'S BEAND : TWO ODD SONNETS. 



These two fragments or exercises have no necessary rela- 
tion to either of the series of sonnets written for the Earl of 
Southampton and William Herbert. I only include them 
in my work, for the sake of making my reprint of Shak- 
speare's Sonnets complete. These essays prove that the 
Poet had nothing to do with making up the collection for 
the Press. He would not have published a double treat- 
ment of one idea like this ; it could have no meaning, 
save to show his cleverness. They, together with the 
' Lover's Lament,' also prove that extraneous things were 
gathered into Thorpe's Book, by William Herbert. 

Cupid laid by his brand and fell asleep, 
A maid of Dian's this advantage found, 
And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep 
In a cold valley-fountain of that ground, 
Which borrowed from this holy fire of love 
A dateless-lively heat, still to endure, 
And grew a seething bath which yet men prove 
Against strange maladies a sovereign cure : 
But at my Mistress ' eyes Love's brand new-fired, 
The Boy for trial needs would touch my breast ; 
I, sick withal, the help o' the bath desired, 
And thither hied a sad distempered guest, 

But found no cure : The bath for my help lies 
Where Cupid got new fire — my Mistress' eyes. 

(153.) 



570 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

The little Love-Grod lying once asleep, 
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand, 
Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste lives to keep, 
Came tripping by ; but in her maiden-hand 
The fairest votary took up that fire 
Which many legions of true hearts had warmed, 
And so the General of hot desire 
Was, sleeping, by a virgin hand disarmed : 
This brand she quenched in a cool well by, 
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual, 
Growing a bath and healthful remedy 
For men diseased : but I, my Mistress' thrall, 
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove — 
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love. 

(154.) 



571 



APPENDIX B. 



DRAYTON AND SHAKSPEARE 



It is understood that we have no contemporary notice of 
the sonnets in MS., other than that of Meres. I cannot, 
however, get rid of the idea that Drayton makes a re- 
markable allusion to them in some lines of his Epistle on 
'Poets and Poesy.' He has spoken of Shakspeare by 
name as a Comedian in whom the player predominates ; 
considers him as good a Poet in the smooth comic vein, 
as any that had trafficked with the stage in his time ; 
reserving his fire for Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Later 
on in the poem are these remarkable lines ! 

6 For such whose poems be they ne'er so rare, 
In private chambers that encloisterecl are, 
And by transcription daintily must go 
As tho' the world unworthy were to know 
Their rich composures, let those men who keep 
These wondrous relics in their judgement deep, 
And cry them up so let such pieces be 
Spoke of by those that shall come after me.' 

Questionless Shakspeare's sonnets were not the only 
poetry then handed about in MS. amongst private friends, 
and spoken of as being rich as it was rare. Still there is 
something very special in this description, It does not 
apply to any known poetry of the kind, nor hit the exact 
circumstantial conditions, as it does to the sonnets of 



572 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Shakspeare. We have nothing of the sort identified as the 
sonnets are by the mention of Meres. In truth the lines 
seem to reply to Meres as consciously as does the title in 
Thorpe's Book. Here are the ' rare poems ' for ' sugred son- 
nets,' the 'private chambers' for 'private friends,' the friends 
who keep the sonnets, for the friends among whom Shak- 
speare's sonnets are, and the men who cry up these relics 
in their judgement deep ! The critic Meres for example. 
There is a feeling of annoyance expressed, a sneer at the 
poetry that is too rare for the common light of day, but 
must go daintily in delicate handwriting, be kept en- 
cloistered in a sumptuous privacy, read by the coloured 
light of friendship, and exalted so to those on the out- 
side who are not permitted to judge if the report be 
true. All this is far too explicit to be general, and must 
have had a particular aim. It smacks of a personal pique. 
And the author of these lines, we infer, had some such 
feeling towards Shakspeare, or there was a coolness be- 
tween them, from the fact that Drayton printed an eulogy 
of Shakspeare, as the Poet of Lucrece, in his ' Matilda the 
Fair and Chaste Daughter of Lord Eobert Fitzwater,' 
which complimentary reference to 

e Lucrece, of whom proud Kome hath boasted long, 
Lately revived to live another age !' 

was allowed to stand in the second edition of the poem 
(1596), but was omitted from all subsequent editions. 
What was the cause we know not. It may be that the 
Poet was piqued at Shakspeare's not reciprocating his 
praise. Whatever it was, some slight ill-feeling underlay 
the act of Drayton, and if these lines do apply to Shak- 
speare's Sonnets the expression is most apposite under the 
circumstances. 

Mr. Collier states that the Epistle appeared in print for 
the first time in the year 1627, but that affords no clue to 
the date at which it was written. Drayton had been pub- 



DRAYTON'S SUPPOSED REFERENCE TO THEM IN MS. 573 

lishing little ; lie did not print anything betwixt his 
'Legend of Great Cromwell' (1607) and his ' Poly- 
olbion (1613-22), as his poetry had no great success. It 
may be that the publication of the sonnets in 1609 was 
one cause why these lines were so long kept back. It was 
a private Epistle, and the great probability is that some 
lines of it, early written, were afterwards added to when 
the poem was published. I am unable to persuade myself 
that the lines quoted do not refer to Shakspeare's Sonnets 
in MS., or that they were not written during the ear her 
period of Shakspeare's career. Surely it would have been 
too absurd on the part of Michael Drayton, who had the 
Poet's rage but mildly, to have merely praised Shakspeare 
for his ' smooth comic vein ' if the lines had been composed 
after ' Othello,' 'Lear,' and 'Macbeth' had been produced ! 
Shakspeare unquestionably borrowed from Drayton's 
' Nyrnphidia ' to set forth his ' Queen Mab,' and enrich his 
fairy world of the ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' Possibly 
Drayton resented this. 

It has been held difficult to determine which was the 
borrower in another instance. In his poem of the ■ Barons' 
Wars ' (1603), Drayton has these Hues — 

' Such one he was (of him we boldly say) 
In whose rich soul all sovereign powers did suit, 
In whom in peace the elements all lay 
So mixt as none could sovereignty impute, 
As all did govern yet all did obey : 
His lively temper was so absolute, 
That it seemed, when Heaven his model first began, 
In him it showed perfection in a Man ! ' 

Everyone remembers Antony's description of Brutus : — 

6 This was the noblest Eoman of them all ! 
His life was gentle : and the elements 
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world " This was a Man"' 



574 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

This looks remarkably like one of Shakspeare's cases of. 
compression ; his stamp on another man's material. 

I do not think 'Julius Cassar ' was written before 1608-9, 
after ' Antony and Cleopatra,' and my impression is that 
it was followed by ' Coriolanus ' about 1611. One reason 
being that in the latter play Shakspeare replies to Davies' 
lines, which appear not to have been published before 
1610 or 1611. Be this as it may, it is noticeable that in a 
later edition of his poem (1619) Drayton has returned to 
his description, and retouched it into a still nearer like- 
ness to that of Shakspeare. The last two lines are altered 
thus : — 

6 As that it seemed when Nature him began, 
She meant to shoiv all that might be in man.' 

It certainly has every appearance of Drayton's Hues having 
been first written, and of his returning to them, after Shak- 
speare had taken the thought to reclaim his own, improved 
by the added touch of the greater Poet, only there is at 
least one more fact in the case to be taken into account. 

In 'Hamlet ' Shakspeare had first of all written of the 
Prince's dead father — 

' A combination and a form indeed, 
Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
To give the world assurance of a Man.' 

Thus the first appearance of the thought is, so far as the 
evidence goes, in Shakspeare's work, but the after-con- 
tention for it is curious. 



575 



APPENDIX C. 



QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FAVOURITES. 



Two of the persons with whom my Theory is concerned 
having been spoken of in this work as Favourites Apparent 
to Queen Elizabeth, I should like to ask. for the sake of 
information, what we are to understand by the term ; Fa- 
vourite ? ' What in the minds of our modern Elizabethans 
does it mean ? What was that relationship to Elizabeth 
with the one name and so many persons, including Leices- 
ter, Hatton, Raleigh, Essex, Southampton, Herbert, Carey 
and others ? 

' I have learnt,' says De Quadra, the Spanish Ambas- 
sador, writing in 1559, according to Mr. Froude, 'I have 
learnt also certain other things as to the terms on which 
the Queen and Lord Eobert stand toward each other, 
which I could not have believed.' These terms are written 
in the next year to the Duchess of Parma thus : — ' The 
Lord Eobert hath made himself master of the business of 
the state and the person of the Queen ; ' and again he 
says, 4 this woman is likely to go to sleep in the palace and 
wake with her Lover in the Tower.' 

In allusion to the current talk on the subject of the 
Dudley amour De Quadra also reports that the Queen 
said she ' was afraid the Archduke Charles might take 



576 SIIAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

advantage of the scandal which could not fail to reach his 
ears on his arrival in England, and should he not marry 
her (in consequence) her honour might suffer.' Should 
not innocence have remained proudly silent ? Why should 
her Majesty have met ^scandal one half-way if she had not 
previously advanced the other half? 

Then, there is the letter of expostulation and advice, 
addressed to Sir Christopher Hatton (Harln.MSS. 787. £88) 
by Sir Edward Dyer, printed in Davison's Poetical Ehap- 
sody, by Nicholas Harris Nicolas (1826). In the year 
1572 the dancing Chancellor had incurred the Queen's 
displeasure, and this letter of Dyer's reads as though it 
were a persuasion for Hatton not to follow a course pri- 
vately spoken of, and he uses these extraordinary words : 
' Though she do descend very much in her sex as a too man, 
yet we may not forget her place, and the nature of it ; ' and 
' For though in the beginning when her Majesty sought you 
[after her good manner) she did bear with rugged dealing 
of yours, until she had what she fancied, yet now, after 
satiety and fulness, it [such mode of action as Hatton had 
contemplated) will rather hurt than help you.'' If this 
letter be genuine my question regarding the meaning of 
the word ' Favourite ' is answered. But, is it a forgery ? 
Sir Edward Dyer appears to have been looked up to by 
the Eoyal Favourites at times as a Mentor in certain pri- 
vate matters pertaining to the Court. He had himself 
hovered on the borderland, and once caught a glimpse of 
the Delectable Mountains of Favouritism. Curiously 
enough Essex writes to him when in a like fix and with a 
similar feeling to Hatton — if Hatton really wrote the letter 
which Dyer is presumed to answer. Essex writes to Dyer 
July 31st, 1587. Two months before, he was first in favour; 
Mr. Anthony Bagot writing to his father in May of the 
same year, says : — ' When she (the Queen) is abroad, 
nobody near her but my Lord of Essex ; and at night 
my Lord is at cards, or one game or another with her, 



MYSTERIOUS ALLUSIONS. 577 

that he cometli not to his own lodging till birds sing in 
the morning.' ! But now he has had a quarrel with the 
Queen and is starting off for the siege of Sluys. 

Essex tells Dyer that he has been c this morning at 
Winchester House ' to seek him, and he continues, ' / 
would have given a thousand pounds to have had one 
hours speech with you; so much I would hearken to your 
counsel, and so greatly do I esteem your friendship.' 2 

The cause of quarrel is the Earl's rivalry with Ealeigh 
in Elizabeth's favour. And Essex says, ' I did let her 
know whether I had cause to disdain his competition of 
love, or whether I could have comfort to give myself over 
to the service of a Mistress that was in awe of such a man ! ' 

What can Eowland White have aimed at in his letter 
of October 1st, 1595, when he writes 

' My Lord of Essex kept his bed all yesterday. His 
favour continues quam diu se bene gesserit Yet my 
Lord of Southampton is a careful waiter here, and secle 
vacante, doth receive favours at her Majesty's hands ; all 
this without breach of amity between them ? ' 

One would also like to know what was the precise 
meaning of Fulke Greville's proposition to make South- 
ampton the Favourite in place of Essex, as related by 
Wotton? 

And what are we to understand from certain hints of 
Eowland White, such as these : — 

6 It is muttered that young Sir Hen. Carey stands to be 
a Favourite ; that his lady mother and my Lady Hunsdon 
do further it and grace it.' 

' JSTow that my Lord Herbert is gone he is very much 
blamed for his cold and weak manner of pursuing her 
Majesty's favour. Young Carey follows it with more 
care, and boldness. Some jealousy I had that you were 
sent away because you should not be here to advise and 

1 Blithjield MSS. 2 Bodleian. Tanner MSS. 76. 46. 

P P 



578 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

counsel him (Herbert) in a matter of such greatness ; for 
surely it would be to your good to see him a Favourite' 
Again, we read in the Life of Edward Herbert, Lord 
Cherbury, that when he first appeared at Court, he was 
kneeling with the rest in the presence chamber, as the 
Queen passed by to the Chapel at Whitehall, and, seeing 
him, her Majesty stopped to ask who he was. On being 
told that he was married, she, swearing her ordinary 
oath, said, ' It is a pity he was married so young,' and 
thereupon gave him her hand to kiss twice, both times 
clapping him on the cheek. Various such illustrations of 
character and conduct call to mind the coarse charge of 
Cardinal Allen, in his 'Admonition to the people of 
England,' which states that the Queen ' made her Court 
as a trap to entangle in sin, and overthrow the younger 
sort of the nobility and gentry of the land,' and make one 
wonder more and more what feeling it was that stirred 
the virgin breast so strongly toward the comely young 
courtiers, to the marriage of whom she had such insuper- 
able objections. 

It does not in the least help to fathom the secret of 
this Eavouriteship, through which Hatton, Leicester, and 
Essex passed ; for which Southampton was proposed, and 
to which honour Herbert might have aspired if he would, 
but was out-distanced by ' young Carey,' to point to the 
age of the Queen and the youth of the young nobles. 
Many aged persons have had extremely youthful tastes. 
It was a characteristic of the Tudor tooth. Besides the 
Queen prided herself on not looking or growing old as 
other women did. And according to unsuspected contem- 
porary testimony, she must have borne her years very 
youthfully. Jacob Eathgeb, who wrote the story of 
Duke Frederick of Wirtemburgh, in ' England as seen by 
Foreigners,' saw her Majesty in her 59th year, and, think- 
ing she was 67 at the time, he records that, although 
she had borne the heavy burthen of ruling a kingdom 



QUEEN ELIZABETH. 579 

for 34 years, she need not indeed — to judge both from 
her person and appearance — yield much to a young girl of 
sixteen ! 

My chief interest at present in the subject mooted, is in 
relation to the Earl of Southampton and Elizabeth Ver- 
non, and her Majesty's persistent opposition to their 
marriage. This led me to note other curious circum- 
stances. Will some devout Elizabethan help me out of 
my doubt and difficulty ? Will Mr. Kingsley, who, in his 
paper on Ealeigh, vouches with so much certitude for 
the Queen's virtue ? Perhaps Mr. Froucle will produce 
a satisfactory explanation ? Meantime I am at liberty to 
maintain that it is not necessary to possess a monkish 
imagination not to be able to chime in with Fuller's em- 
phatic cry of ' VirginissimaJ where he calls Elizabeth 
when living, the first Maid on Earth, and when dead, the 
second in heaven. 



p p 2 



580 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



APPENDIX D. 



TITUS ANDRONICUS, 



This drama has been ascribed to the pen of Shak- 
speare on the authority of Meres and the first folio ; all 
the other evidence tends to show that Meres made a mis- 
take which was afterwards repeated. 

I cannot imagine how anyone who has intimately felt 
the soul of Shakspeare can possibly countenance such a 
mistake. For the play has none of the Shakspearian 
condensation of thought which, in his earliest work, is 
loosed in the most utter sweetnesses and felicities of ex- 
pression. None of the Shakspearian gusto of language 
which makes many of his cordial words as it were the 
audible kiss of sound and sense. None of the Shakspearian 
6 flowing continuity of interchangeable pauses : ' there is 
nothing of the vital glow or ' natural ruby ' of the Shak- 
spearian life, and can be none of the usual signs of its 
presence. In the whole play, there is no single touch 
that his closest acquaintances instantly and for ever recog- 
nise as the master's ; not one of those nearnesses to nature 
that we know as Shakspearian ; and yet he could not 
write thirty lines without emitting an authentic flash of 
such revelation. 

In short, those who accept ' Titus Andronicus ' as 
Shakspeare's work cannot only not have followed out his 
nearness to nature in the more delicate touches and opal- 



< TITUS ANDRONICUS ' NOT SHAKSPEARE'S. 581 

escent graces of his poetry, but they totally misapprehend 
the quality of his coarseness ; the signs of his immaturity. 
' Pericles ' is an early play. Dryden calls it the earliest, 
and I see no cause for doubting the tradition, but many 
reasons for accepting it. And this play contains the un- 
mistakeable Shakspearian touch of life, of prompt and 
pregnant thought, of phrase that glows like the serene 
fire in a gem. But it is impossible to find any proof of 
Shakspeare's presence from beginning to end of the ' Titus 
Andronicus.' 

Shakspeare's is the tragedy of Terror ; this is the 
tragedy of Horror. His tragedy is never bloodily sen- 
sual ; his genius has ever a spiritualising influence. Blood 
may flow, but he is dealing with more than blood. This 
play is a perfect slaughter-house, and the blood makes 
appeal to all the senses. The murder is committed in 
the very gateways of the sense. It reeks blood, it smells 
of blood, we almost feel that we have handled blood ; it 
is so gross. The mental stain is not whitened by Shak- 
speare's sweet springs of pity ; the horror is not hallowed 
by that appalling sublimity with which he invested his 
chosen ministers of death. It is tragedy only in the 
coarsest material relationships ; the tragedy of Horror. 

Mr. Knight whose views on the subject of our 
poet's earliest work, compel his arguments to straddle 
over impossible spaces past all power of standing, en- 
deavours to show that this play was written by Shakspeare 
in some period of 6 storm and stress ' when he was in the 
throes and agonies of labouring might too big for birth, 
and had not yet attained to his repose of power. 

Yet, directly after, he remarks that from the first, 
Shakspeare, ' with that consummate judgment which gave 
fitness to everything he did or proposed to do, held his 
genius in subjection to the apprehension of the people till 
he felt secure of their cap ability to appreciate the highest 
excellence.' But this equally implies his power to stand 



582 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

over his work and hold his genius in such subjection as 
should effectually prevent its breaking out in the wild way 
it must have done supposing him to be the author of 
'Titus Anclronicus.' It is demonstrable however that 
Shakspeare did not pass through any such period of agita- 
tion or mental green-sickness. His work is healthy from 
the first. He makes no absurd endeavours to embrace im- 
mensity ; had no assumptions of strength that collapse in 
spasm. No tearing of things to pieces tooth and nail. 
No blind haste or threatening rant. But everywhere the 
ease, the depth, the fulness, the poise of a rich genius 
flowering in joy, whose power was from the visible begin- 
ning supreme in its range and according to its theme. 

We shall best apprehend the superb and happy health 
of the man by entering into the humour of his ' Venus 
and Adonis.' His merry motive all through is to tantalize 
the passion with which he plays so provokingly. And 
this he does with the large ease, the sure touch, the 
ripe humour of human nature's great master. The man 
who could so early take such an attitude of assured 
sovereignty could not have afterwards become the fretting 
fuming slave of ' Storm and Stress.' Besides which we 
may learn from the Marlowe group of Sonnets that as 
early as 1592 or 1593 Shakspeare was fully conscious of 
the gross faults and defects, the surfeiting comparisons, 
the Brobdignagian bombast that Marlowe and others 
revelled in, who, as Nash told them, would ' embowel the 
clouds in a speech of comparison ; thinking themselves 
more than initiated in Poets' immortality if they but once 
get Boreas by the beard and the Heavenly Bull by the 
dewlap.' Shakspeare assures us that he does not do this, 
and in spite of the handsome way in which he spoke of 
his rival, his finer ear and truer taste must have detected a 
good deal of bombast in the mighty line. He would see 
that the glow of Marlowe's imagination had in it a swarthy 
smoke, so that the poetry never attained the true regulus 



A MISTAKE RECTIFIED. 583 

of colour, but came forth from the furnace as bronze, 
not having the mellow splendour of pure gold. He knew 
well enough that Marlowe had not quite found the way 
to the noble in poetry, and that he strove all the harder 
to reach the grim heights where frowns the terrible. 

One of the greatest differences betwixt Shakspeare 
and Marlowe was that the latter poet had not sufficient 
humour to hinder his taking the step from the sub- 
lime to the ridiculous, whereas Shakspeare had a most 
active and ticklish sense of the absurd. This must have 
been one of his quickest, keenest, most self-preserving 
instincts ! — the liveliest part of his self-consciousness. 
This alone would have prevented his following in the track 
of Marlowe save for the purpose of sketching on the back 
of the other poet as it were, a portrait in caricature of his 
more prominent features — making a face for the fun of the 
thing, such as setting Pistol to parody Tamburlane, and 
devoting some of his earliest merriest satire to mock those 
who talked unlike men of God's making. And yet 
Shakspeare is supposed to have written or re-written a 
drama which contains many of Marlowe's worst charac- 
teristics, the unnatural spirit of which is far worse than 
anything in the expression. 

Had this play been our Poet's it could not have been 
very early work. It is assumed to have been produced as 
a new Play at Henslowe's Theatre on the 23rd of January 
1593. This however is a mistake. ' Titus Andronicus r 
was not produced until January 23rd 1594. 

At page 31 of the Diary Henslowe begins his dates 
with the 27th of December 1593, and continues with that 
year up to December 31st. Next day January 1st should 
be dated 1594 or 159f, their New Year's day being March 
25th. But the year has been left unchanged, and it 
continues unchanged up to April 6 th in the entry apper- 
taining to the Duke of Sussex's men and the Queen's 
men, who were then playing together, or else Henslowe 



584 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

lumped his receipts together having a share in both. 
April 6th is dated 1593 and the following night, April 
7th is dated 1594, for the first time in that year the recti- 
fication of the dating is made. So that from January 1st 
to April 7th the year according to our reckoning, is dated 
wrongly. During this time ' Titus Andronicus' was pro- 
duced as a new play on the 22nd of January 1593 as 
dated, which means January 22nd 1594. This makes 
it still more improbable that it was Shakspeare's Tragedy. 
Malone supposes the play brought out at Henslowe's 
Theatre to be the same as that included in Shakspeare's 
Works as ' Titus Andronicus.' No doubt the play is the 
same but it is simply inconceivable that it should have 
been a new work of our Poet's brought out at a rival 
theatre in 1594. The play was probably founded on the 
older ' Titus and Vespasian ' of the same theatre but, as 
Hallam judges, it is not Shakspeare's in any sense. It 
seems to me that Ben Jonson's sneer at it is good evidence 
that the play of which he speaks was not Shakspeare's. 
Also, he may have classed it with the old ' Jeronimo ' on 
account of its quality without implying that both were of 
the same date. My conviction is that the play was 
mapped out and partly written by Marlowe who was the 
great poet at Henslowe's Theatre. His ' Jew of Malta,' 
and the ' Titus Andronicus ' were running there alternately 
and to judge by Henslowe's receipts the latter play was a 
success. Marlowe's death in June 1593 would prevent his 
finishing the play and be the chief cause why his name 
slipped out of sight. It .was entered in the Stationers' 
Eegisters 1593 but not completed for performance till 
early in the next year. And whose was the hand that 
finished the play ? Whose should it be but Nash's ? he 
who was united with Marlowe in the production of 
' Queen Dido.' It appears to me that no great amount 
of insight is necessary to discover the same workmanship 
in both plays. The Drama may have been removed to 



A MISTAKE RECTIFIED. 585 

Shakspeare's Theatre on account of Nash's part in it and 
because both Nash and Marlowe were under the patronage 
of Shakspeare's friend, Southampton, in whose interest 
the play may have been completed and at whose request 
it may have been adopted by the Blackfriars Company. 
It was published without a name in 1594. And if our 
Poet made a copy in his own hand- writing that may have 
misled the Editors of the first folio. As for Meres, it is 
far easier to believe that he made one mistake in his list 
of an unpublished literature than it is to accept ' Titus 
Andronicus' as Shakspeare's work in any sense. 



586 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 



APPENDIX E. 



EYSELL.' 



SONNET 111. 



' Efsell ' is Vinegar, says Steevens, and he quotes a 

colourable illustration from ' A mery Geste of the Frere 

and the Boye.' 

6 Grod that dyed for us all 
And drank both eysell and gall.' 

Vinegar, says Malone, is esteemed very efficacious in 
preventing the communication of the plague and other 
contagious distempers, which is quite true and yet not ap- 
plicable ; for the lover in the sonnet has no contagious 
distemper, his infection was not physical, he did not require 
to be fumigated ; his stomach was not literally a sick cham- 
ber ; and our Social Science, as yet, has failed to show that 
vinegar can contend successfully with immoral influences. 
I cannot rest satisfied that the Eysell of the old ballad 
was not more than an equivalent for vinegar ; I suspect 
it of a much more subtle meaning. In the Salisbury 
Primer (1555), the eighth prayer of the Fifteen O's be- 
gins thus : — ' Blessed Jesu ! sweetness of heart and 
ghostly pleasure of souls, I beseech thee, for the bitterness 
of the Eysell and gall that thou tasted and suffered 
for me in thy passion, &c.,' which seems to imply more 
than is expressed by vinegar. No doubt we have inter- 
preted the old ' Eysell ' as vinegar, but that is not the 



'EYSELL' MEANS MORE THAN VINEGAR. 587 

question. My feeling is that when the word was used to 
express the potion drunk by the Son of God on the cross, 
it signified far more than vinegar. I do not think Shak- 
speare could have chosen vinegar as the express juice of 
all bitterness, seeing that bitterness is not only not its 
dominant character ; it is not even a characteristic ; 
neither could it apply to a moral infection. Surely the 
lady would have looked to see if her lover were ' snigger- 
ing,' had he offered to swallow draughts of vinegar before 
he ventured to kiss her ? And surely ' Eysell ' was used 
because it had some moral signification ? My query is 
whether ' Eysell ' may not have been a word in the vulgar 
tongue, the exact meaning of which is now lost to the 
Etymologists? May not it have once signified tears, 
tears of sorrow, tears of repentance, tears of such pre- 
ciousness and power, that the sight of the eye is as it 
were, bartered for bitterness, its life and strength sold to 
produce them ; thus, in brief, ' Eysell ' would be the life 
and ' precious seeing ' of the eye sold in tears ? And the 
lover would offer to drink potions of this, as the extract 
of all bitterness, a water of the most potent efficacy in 
washing a soul white, and cleansing it from moral im- 
purity. Strange things were drunk, and strange offers 
made by the lovers of the time, in amorous bravado. 
But this lover was intensely in earnest, and the word is 
chosen for some transcendant worth. There was no bit- 
terness to be expressed beyond it, and so he has to follow 
it with ''No bitterness that I will bitter think.' Now 
vinegar is altogether inadequate for the purpose, either in 
Shakspeare's or the popular imagination. 

There is, I think, some slight authority for my con- 
jecture in the sense our Poet has of the virtue of tears, 
and the way in which he speaks of chinking them. 

In sonnet 34 the speaker says : — 

6 Ah ! but those tears are pearl, which thy love sheds, 
And they are rich and ransom all ill deeds,' 



688 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Here is the equivalent of ' Eysell ' as regards the precious- 
ness of the tears, only translated more gaily. In the 
4 Venus and Adonis,' Venus asks Death, ' Dost thou drink 
tears, that thou provokest such weeping ? ' In part iii. of 
King Henry VI. we have ' for every word I speak, ye see 
I drink the ivater of mine eyes ! ' And in sonnet 119 

6 What potions have I drunk of siren tears ! ' 

Here the speaker has drunk potions of tears of the wrong 
sort. Moreover he pleads that in coming back to his 
Mistress, he has brought ivater for his stain. I doubt if 
' Vinegar' can be traced etymologically to 'Eyesell.' On 
the other hand, ' Eh-scen,' or ' Eceh-sen,' is semi-Saxon for 
eye-sight. Also we have the eye-water, Euphrasy, to 
brighten and make clear. Why not the eye-water, 
c Eysell,' or Eye-sell, which is so precious a thing morally 
when wept in bitterness of soul, as to be considered of 
incomparable virtue in cleansing, and potent against 
infection ? 



HIE 'TAMING OF THE SHREW NOT SO EARLY A TLAY. 589 



APPENDIX F. 



SONNET 132, AND 

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW 



' And truly not the morning sun of heaven 
Better becomes the grey cheeks of the east, 
Nor that full star that ushers in the even, 
Doth half that glory to the sober west, 
As those two mourning eyes become thy face ! ' 

Sonnet 132. 

6 What stars do spangle heaven with such beauty, 
As those two eyes become that heavenly face ! ' 

Taming of the Shrew, Act iv. sc. 5. 

At first sight it will appear from the above comparison 
that Shakspeare in this instance used the thought first in 
the drama, the 4 Taming of the Shrew ' being generally 
considered a somewhat early play. But so far as my 
insight into his working goes, and it can be corroborated 
by intrinsic evidence, I more than doubt whether he did 
reverse his usual practice even in this case. Unless with 
a very personal purpose, as in the description of Lady 
Rich's mourning eyes, it is positively the rule with 
him for the thought or expression to appear first in 
the sonnets. In the present instance, there is nothing 
sufficiently personal to account for any departure 
from his ordinary method. A question arises as to 



590 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

whether this repetition may not throw a little light on 
the chronology of the play. The ' Taming of the Shrew' 
is not mentioned by Meres in his list of 1598, and if the 
work be studied afresh with the foregoing suggestion in 
mind, which is at least equal in authority to any tradi- 
tional belief, I think it will be evident that the play is a 
much later production than the critics have supposed. 
It contains no signs of early workmanship. All through 
there is the most concentrated attention to business. The 
direct simplicity, the certainty of touch, the self-control, are 
quite worthy of Shakspeare's ripened art. The poetry has 
that smack of cordiality in the ring of certain words, hearty 
as the crack of Petruchio's whip, yet denoting the most 
mature nicety of choice. The humour is quick of touch 
and exquisite as his best. Moreover, the play has the 
mastery to achieve in verse the same result as the Poet's 
other comedy attains by prose. He has clothed farce 
sumptuously as he apparelled his own Christopher Sly. 
Never was farce so wealthily married to immortal verse. 
It seems to me that the character of Petruchio belongs to 
the same class of dramatic perceptions as that of Hamlet, 
inasmuch as both characters play an assumed part ; and 
that the comedy of the one may have been the natural 
balance to the tragedy of the other — the other pennon, 
so to say, on which the Poet's mind moved at the time. 
It tends somewhat to the illustration of this view that 
Shakspeare should, in both comedy and tragedy, have 
made the same stage use of the 'players.' It is just possible 
that the Herbert sonnet above quoted may have been 
written in 1598. The younger the speaker was at the time, 
the more effective would be the jest on the subject of age in 
sonnet 138. Be this as it may, I hold that the Poet 
would certainly use the thought in the sonnet before 
applying it in the play. 



THE REPLY TO MARLOWE'S < PASSIONATE SHEPHERD.' 591 



APPENDIX G. 



WILLIAM HERBERT AND SHAK- 
SPEARE'S MINOR PIECES. 



I suspect we owe to Herbert much of the confusion 
that exists with regard to Shakspeare's minor pieces. In 
the first place our Poet could not have written some of 
the tilings ascribed to his pen. Nor could he have in- 
tended the four fragments on the one subject, 'Venus 
and Adonis ' — if they are all his — to appear in print as 
we find them in the 'Passionate Pilgrim.' I think it 
must have been from Herbert that Jaggard obtained the 
two sonnets with other odds and ends of Shakspeare's 
writing, mixed up with some of Herbert's own, all of 
which Jaggard put forth as Shakspeare's. 

So with the communications to ' England's Helicon.' 
I believe that Herbert supplied the Editor with the copy 
of Marlowe's ' Passionate Shepherd ' and Shakspeare's 
reply, now composed in full, with a third poem on the 
same subject written by Himself ! The signature of 
' Ignoto ' has simply no meaning whatever for us. If it 
had any when used, that is now identifiable, it must 
surely have indicated the Editor's ignorance of the author- 
ship ! 



592 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

Pieces by a dozen different writers were subscribed 
'Ignoto.' Therefore the reply to Marlowe's 'Passion- 
ate Shepherd ' cannot be ascribed to Sir Walter Ealeigh 
on the strength of that signature. Ellis gave the reply to 
Ealeigh because in one of the copies of 'England's Helicon,' 
the intials W. E. were said to have been at first appended 
to the earliest complete copy of the verses. But Ellis dis- 
tinctly referred to Steevens's copy which is now among 
Malone's books in the Bodleian (No. 278), and, as Mr. 
Hannah states, he must have been mistaken, for, in that 
copy the signature is simply ' Ignoto,' and has never 
been disturbed. So that Ealeigh's claim to the poem 
rests on the authority of Walton, which is not of the 
slightest value. The old Angler's account is just the 
vaguest hearsay, as wide of the mark as was Lamb's ran- 
dom shot at the man whom he did not know, but 
damned at a venture ! The first edition of Walton's book 
was published in 1653. In this the writer speaks of ' that 
smooth song which ivas made by Kit Marlowe now at least 
fifty years ago ! ' A very safe assertion for Marlowe had 
then been dead precisely sixty years ! But Isaac's famili- 
arity with the facts was not equal to his familiarity with 
the Poet's name ! He further states that the reply was 
written by Sir Walter Ealeigh ' in his younger days' Now, 
as Ealeigh was born in 1552 he was about half a century 
old at the time when, according to Walton, the ' Passion- 
ate Shepherd ' was written ! There needs no further 
proof that the ' Angler ' had no personal knowledge 
of the subject and is merely twaddling. The genuine 
clue to the unravelment of the case appears to be given 
in the ' Passionate Pilgrim,' where one stanza only of 
the ' reply ' is printed. Tracing backward by such light 
as my reading of the sonnets throws on the subject, I 
should interpret the matter thus — Marlowe wrote his 
song for Southampton, to which Shakspeare appended at 
first four lines in reply. Southampton having given the 



'PASSIONATE PILGKIM' WRITTEN BY SHAKSPEARE. 593 

paper to Herbert, it appeared with other things in the 
' Passionate Pilgrim.' Afterwards Shakspeare wrote his 
reply in full, Herbert composed a second reply, and all 
three pieces came into print together in ' England's 
Helicon.' Internal evidence stamps the first reply as 
Shakspeare's. As his I reprint it here— 

6 If all the world and love were young 
And truth in every Shepherd's tongue, 
These pretty pleasures might me move 
To live with thee, and be thy Love. 

6 But Time drives flocks from field to fold. 
When rivers rage and rocks grow cold : 
And Philomel becometh dumb ; 
The rest complain of cares to come ! 

6 The Flowers do fade, and wanton fields 
To wayward Winter's reckoning yields : 
A honey tongue, a heart of gall, 
Is fancy's Spring, but sorrow's Fall. 

c Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, 
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, 
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotton ; 
In folly ripe, in reason rotton ! 

& Thy belt of straw and ivy buds. 
Thy coral clasps and amber studs — 
All these in me no means can move 
To come to thee and be thy Love. 

6 But could youth last and love still breed — 
Had joy no date, had age no need ; 
Then those delights my mind might move 
To live with thee and be thy Love.' 

How like our practical Poet it is! and how Shak- 
spearianly sensible are some of the expressions ! ' In 
folly ripe, in reason rotton,' is a line we may swear by, 

QQ 



594 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 



APPENDIX H. 



THE SILENT LOVER, 



These is a lyric generally known by this name ; one of 
the loveliest among Elizabethan love-lyrics. Its authorship 
has been disputed. The latest editor of Ealeigh's poems 
thinks Sir Walter's claim to it is ' supported by so many 
independent testimonies, that we need not hesitate to 
regard- him as the author.' I beg leave to suggest a re- 
consideration of the subject; and submit one or two 
items that have been overlooked in the evidence. The 
poem is here printed with slight variations from the MS. 
copy in the Ashmole Museum. 1 

( Wrong not, dear Mistress of my heart. 
The merits of true passion, 
By thinking that he feels no smart 
Who sues for no compassion : 

4 Though that my thoughts do not approve 
The conquest of your beauty — 
It comes not from defect of love, 
But from excess of duty ! 

4 For knowing that I sue to serve 
A saint of such perfection, 
As all desire, but none deserve 
A place in her affection- — 

1 MSS., Ashmole, 781. p. 143. 



THE 'SILENT LOVER' WRITTEN BY HERBERT. 595 

6 1 rather choose to want relief, 
Than venture the revealing ; 
Though glory recommends the grief, 
Despair dissuades the healing : 

' Thus the desires that aim so high 
Of any mortal lover, 
When reason cannot make them die, 
Discretion doth them cover : 

€ Yet, when discretion doth bereave 
The plaints that I should utter, 
Then your discretion may perceive 
That Silence is a suitor : 

i Silence in love doth show more woe 
Than words tho' ne'er so witty ; 
The Beggar that is dumb, you know, 
May challenge double pity.' 

The poem is wrought with great skill ; it has the linked 
strength and graceful movement of a coat of chain-mail ; 
the verses in this copy having no full stop until the lyric 
has reached its climax in that most naive of all conceits 
in the last stanza. I do not think the mind of Ealeigh 
moved thus lightly and naturally in verse. Such of his 
poetry as can be identified, is altogether wanting in the 
winsome grace of this song, and has no such quick spirit 
of fancy. His manner is more set and formal as though 
the dress of his thought were stiffly brocaded. The poem 
is ascribed to Ealeigh in some of the old MS. collections 
in which his name has been so often misapplied. In one 
of the Eawl. MSS. the piece is entitled ' Sir Walter 
Raleigh to Queen Elizabeth ; ' another instance, says the 
Eev. Mr. Hannah, where a right name is coupled with a 
wrong legend. I suspect the copyist may have been as 
right with the name, as with the legend, and no more. 
The copy in the MS. Ashm. is signed ' Lo. Walden ; 5 

qq2 



593 SHAKSPEAEE'S SONNETS. 

which is accepted as ' Lord Warden,' and assumed to 
mean Sir W. Ealeigh as Lord Warden of the Stannaries. 
This signature is eqally favourable however, to the other 
claimant William, Earl of Pembroke, who was also Lord 
Warden of the Stannaries, under James. Next the poem 
is printed as Herbert's in the poems collected by the 
younger Donne. Here, to say the least, is quite as good 
authority as any on which the poem is ascribed to 
Ealeigh. 

It is almost the sole piece in the collection dedicated 
by that editor to the Countess of Devonshire, to which 
his words apply. ' Whatever was excellently said to any 
lady in all these poems was meant for you.' Lastly, the 
germ idea belongs to Shakspeare — he who wrote the 
tenderest things touching silence in love. Li Sonnet 26 
the Poet pleads — 

6 0, let my books he then the eloquence 
And dumb presagers of my speaking breast ; 
Who plead for love and look for recompence, 
More than that tongue that more hath more expressed ! 
learn to read what silent love hath writ : 
To hear with eyes belongs to love's fine wit.' 

Again, in Sonnet 85 he says — 

' Then others for the breath of words respect ; 
Me, for my dumb thoughts speaking in effect.' 

Now, if there be any value in the authority which assigns 
the poem to Ealeigh, as one addressed by lum to the 
Queen, it goes to prove that the poem was written during 
the life of her Majesty, or else the subject could not have 
been given. And I think that whoever wrote the ' Silent 
Lover' must have been acquainted with Shakspeare's 
Sonnets so that if it was written before the Queen's death, 
the acquaintanceship must have been with the Sonnets in 
MS. Thus there would be three points in favour of Herbert 



THE 'SILENT LOVER.' 007 

— the borrowing of the thought from the Sonnets, which 
the Earl held in MS. — the signature of ' Lord Warden,' in 
the Ashmole MS. copy — and the fact of its appearance in 
Herbert's collected poems. When we add to this the 
internal evidence which is strong against Ealeigh's claim, 
I think the poem may be, with the greater probability, 
assigned to Herbert. For, not only is Shakspeare's idea 
the root of it, but I suspect the great Poet retouched it 
for his young friend, and finished it with that last stanza 
which is the ' captain jewel in the carcanet,' and has the 
flash of our Poet's mind; a thought that he set in many 
lights. In ' Much Ado about Nothing' we find ' silence 
is the perfectest herald of joy.' In ' Troilus and Cressida,' 
' See your silence, cunning in dumbness ! ' 
Mr. Hannah prints these additional lines : 

' Passions are likened best to floods and streams ; 
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb : 
So when affections yield discourse, it seems 
The bottom is but shallow whence they come. 
They that are rich in words, in words discover 
That they are poor in that which makes a Lover' — 

and seems to think the copy in Herbert's poems imperfect, 
because the above fines are wanting. As one accustomed 
to write lyrics, I should say that the man who wrote. the 
' Silent Lover,' an essential lyric, could by no means have 
added the above lines. They are a tawdry bit of second- 
hand trash that has been tagged on ! Any MSS. which 
included them could have no original authority. I should 
judge that the Ashmole copy contains the original poem, 
and that the one in 'Herbert's Poems' was retouched 
from it. For illustration, the word ' utter' occurs twice 
in the first-named copy, and it has been taken out of the 
4th stanza of the later version and the word ' venture ' 
substituted, because 'utter' was used in a rhyme of 
stanza 6. Also, in ' Herbert's Poems' the first stanza has 
been repeated for a refrain at the end. 



598 SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 



APPENDIX I. 



KING JOHN, 



' We will not line his thin bestained cloak 
With our pure honors.' 

Act. iv. sc. 3. 

The present reading of the sonnets will shed many little 
glancing lights on the plays. It will open up a richer 
vein of commentary which I have not been able to work 
fully for want of space. I believe, for example, that 
sonnet 67 illustrates the above quotation and compara- 
tively proves ' thin bestained cloak' to be the wrong 
reading. 

' Ah wherefore with infection should he live, 
And with his presence grace impiety, 
That sin by him advantage should achieve, 
And lace itself with his society ? ' 

Here sin lacing or decorating itself assuredly suggests 
that the cloak to be, or not to be, lined 4 with our pure 
honors' was sm-bestained, not thin bestained. The cloak 
might require new lining, either because it was very thin, 
or much soiled, but Shakspeare would hardly have put 
forth such a double reason for a single lining. Lastly, 
' our pure honours' necessarily implies 'his sin bestained 
cloak.' 



TWO OK THREE DISPUTED READINGS. 509 



MACBETH. 

i I have no spur 
To prick the sides of my intent, but only- 
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself 
And falls o' the other.' 

Act i. sc. 7. 

As the text stands above we have in shadowy imagery a 
most extraordinary horse and rider. Macbeth was no more 
likely to wear a single spur that would strike on both sides 
than the Irishman was to discover the much-coveted gun 
that would shoot round a corner. Moreover his horse 
must have had three sides to it at the least. Inow, a horse 
may have four sides, right and left, inside and outside, and 
the street gamins will at times advise an awkward horse- 
man to ride inside for safety, but it cannot have three sides. 
And if the single spur had pricked two sides there could 
have been no other left for 4 vaulting ambition ' to fall on. 
The truth is that ' sides ' is a misprint. The single spur of 
course implies a single side — the side of Macbeth's intent, 
which leaves ' the other ' for the ' vaulting ambition ' to 
alight on in case of a somersault — the side of Macbeth's 
unintent. The passage comes perfectly right if we read— 



' I have no spur 
To prick the side of my intent, but only 
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself 
And falls o' the other. 9 



COO SHAKSPEARE'S SOXXETS. 



MACBETH. 

4 What beast was 't then, 
That made you break this enterprise to me ? ' 

Act i. sc. 7. 

That ' beast ' and not ' boast ' is the genuine lection here 
may be illustrated comparatively, by referring to ' King 
Bichard II.,' act iii. scene 4, where the Queen asks the re- 
flective Gardener — 

i What Eve, what Serpent hath suggested thee ? ' 

The Serpent was sliding through the mind of Lady Mac- 
beth just before, when she bade her husband to 

6 look like the innocent flower 
But be the serpent under 't ' — 

and no doubt she afterwards alludes to the Serpent as the 
beast of the field and the tempter that beguiled Eve ; 
; What beast, what serpent was it that tempted you ? ' 



CYMBELINE. 

s some jay of Italy, 
Whose mother was her painting.' 

Act iii. sc. 4. 

Here is one of those instantaneous Shakspearian flashes 
which smelt the meaning of many words into one with a 
lightning-like power. It is the strip of colour on the wing 
of the jay that causes that bird to be commonly called the 
painted jay ; this creates its popular character. And the 
woman here spoken of is a jay ' whose mother was her 
painting ' because her beauty was a false creation; her 
painting made her, or mothered her, or was her Mother. 
Her maker is the sense of the passage, but ' mother ' was 
the nearest word that could be consistently used. 



AN OLD READING DRAMATICALLY RIGHT. G01 

ROMEO AND JULIET. 

k Spread thy close curtain love-performing night, 
That Runaway's eyes may wink and Komeo 
Leap to these arms untalked-of and unseen.' 

Act iii. sc. 2. 

I do not understand why there should have been such 
an absurd dance of the Commentators after the ' runn- 
awayes ' of the old editions, or such a wild-goose chase in 
search of unnecessary substitutes, like ' Eumour's ' ' Eu- 
mourer's,' ' Eenomy's ' ' unawares,' ' enemies ' eyes,' &c. 
To my thinking the old reading, with Juliet as Eunaway, 
is a most golden one ; subtly Shakspearian ; the passage 
poetically playfully perfect. Juhet is the Eunaway ! She 
has run away from the parental authority and from her 
duty as a daughter. She has run away from the arms of 
father and mother to the bosom of her lover. She has run 
away to be secretly married, and is now waiting to run 
into the embrace of her husband. No word could be 
more characteristic than this, when applied by Juhet to 
herself. Mr. Dyce has printed ' rude day's eyes,' which 
may easily be shown to be an impossible reading. Juhet 
would not wish the eyes of day to wink if she wanted them 
to close altogether. Besides, the closing of day's eyes 
would, of course, be included in the coming of night, and 
it is not Shakspeare's habit to state that which is already 
implied. This rejection of Juliet as 'Eunaway 'and the 
vulgar public appeal to the clay, &c. show that the Critics 
have totally misapprehended the whole speech and grossly 
misinterpreted the character of the speaker. They have 
assumed that the sole incentive of this appeal for night to 
come was Juliet's eagerness for the perfecting of her mar- 
riage. It is not so. That would make of Juhet a forward 
wanton, and of her speech an invocation most immodest, 
whereas her appeal to Night is for protection, for its dark- 
ness to drop a veil that will, as it were, hide her from her- 



602 SHAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 

self. She is naturally desirous for Borneo's coming, but 
her great anxiety for the night's coming is the sensitiveness 
of modesty. The appeal is for Night to curtain round the 
bridal bed — for the Night to teach her how to lose a winning 
match- — for the night to c hood her unmanned blood ' as 
the eyes of the falcon are covered up. This is the govern- 
ing thought of the speech, therefore it was of the first 
dramatic necessity that an early cue should be given. And 
so, after the first passionate outburst the Poet makes Juliet 
wish the night to come that her eyes may c wink ; ' i.e. 
may be bashfully veiled in the shadow of the darkness 
so that she can modestly countenance her husband's 
coming. The Critics would deprive the speech of its 
mood indicative, the character of a suggestion which was 
meant to guard it ; a thought that acts like a bridal veil — 
a touch that gives to the invocation the tint of virgin 
crimson without which the speech would be positively 
barefaced. They have been looking too outwardly ; dwell- 
ing too much on the assumed context of night and day, and 
have missed the dramatic motive and the more precious 
personal context. Juliet was not looking quite so much 
abroad as they have been ; her thought was more inward 
and had a more private appropriateness ; her feeling is 
altogether more maidenly than has been supposed. Other 
reasons and illustrations might be adduced to show that 
the old editions have given us Shakspeare's meaning, which 
cannot be mended. After what the Nurse tells us of her 
young Lady's pleasant conceit in coupling the names of 
' Eosemary ' and ' Komeo,' it is very characteristic for Juliet 
to match the names of Eunaway and Eomeo in loving alli- 
teration. Also the coupling of her name in some shape 
or other with ' Eomeo ' in the lines quoted is of infinitely 
the greater necessity. She wants the night to fold in the 
pair of lovers, and would not leave herself out. The ' and 
Eomeo ' is of itself sufficient to tell us that Eunaway must 
be Juliet. Lastly, to come to that surface comparison be- 



AN OLD READING DRAMATICALLY RIGHT. 603 

yond which the Critics have so seldom gone for illustration, 
the thought in the Poet's mind respecting maiden modesty 
winking at marriage may be proved conclusively by refer- 
ence to the play of Henry V. : — 

* Burgundy. Can you blame her then, being a maid 
yet rosed over with the virgin crimson of 
modesty, if she deny the appearance of a 
naked blind boy. 

' King Henry. Yet they do wink and yield,— as love is blind 

and enforces Good my lord, teach 

your cousin to consent winking? 

Act v. sc. 2. 

Here is a sufficient exemplification of Shakspeare's mean- 
ing in making the appeal for Night to come that Juliet's 
(the naughty Eunaway's) eyes may wink under the cover 
of its darkness as well as Eomeo's visit be perfectly secret. 
The Commentators had no warrant whatever for suspecting 
the old reading, and have shown an utter lack of insight in 
their attempts to alter it, which have been quite destruc- 
tive of the dramatic intention and injurious to the character 
of Juliet. 



LONDON 

PRINTED ET SPOT TISWOO D E AND CO. 

NEW-STREET SQTJAEE 



SUPPLEMENTAL CHAPTER 



THE SECRET BE AM A OE SHAKSPE ARE'S 
SONNETS. 



A FAMILIAR EPISTLE TO A FRIEND. 

My Deae 

I sometimes say that by the time we reach the end 
of life we may have attained sufficient wisdom, as the result of 
all our experience, to equip us for the beginning, if we could 
only get a fresh start. So I feel with regard to my book on 
looking back at it after the lapse of years. I wrote it with the 
eager earnestness of the advocate; I can review it with the 
deliberation of- the judge. How many flaws I am conscious of, 
that you have not found out. How much more compactly, 
quietly, conclusively, I could write it now. And yet I know 
well enough that if it had not been written at the time just as 
it is, it would not have been done at all. I cannot re-write 
it, but I may make a few additions with the view of per- 
fecting the evidence and helping others to attain that sure 
grasp of the truth of my interpretation of the secret drama of 
Shakspeare's Sonnets which has been growing with me ever 
since my book was written. I have been shown no reasons, nor 
have I myself discovered any, for doubting the main conclusions 
of the work, some of which I can confirm and enforce with addi- 
tional proof; what I meant was that I could now write it in a 
manner far more satisfactory to myself. 

I cannot confess to having derived much benefit from our 
current criticism. Many writers have found it safer to doubt, 
or give but a qualified approval, than to discuss my evidence or 
avow their conviction. On the whole I may say that those 
who do not accept my reading cannot reply to it, and are hence- 
forth compelled to keep silence on the subject. You have 
remarked that of late it has been found most convenient to 
write the biography of Shakspeare and make no mention of his 
Sonnets ! But there they are, to be faced, and not to be got 

b 2 



4 THE SECRET DRAMA 

over or outflanked by any such strategy, however convenient. 
Some of my critics underrated the necessary obscurity of the 
subject investigated : they seemed to think that I ought to have 
left no difficulty where before it was all difficulty. They were 
suddenly plunged, as it were, into subterranean passages in the 
dimmest twilight, through which I had been groping for years, 
and at first sight very naturally found they could not make out 
all that I described as being there. 

A story is told of a discussion betwixt some sculptor and, I 
think, the painter Giorgione, as to which of their two arts was 
the perfectest representative of Nature. The sculptor adduced 
the fact that by means of his art you could get all round the 
figure, as the especial point of pre-eminence. Whereupon 
Giorgione painted a figure beside a stream of water, with a 
looking-glass so arranged that you saw all round the figure with 
the aid of the two mirrors, and so included more nature, and 
beat the sculptor on his own chosen ground. Figuratively 
speaking, the characters of the Sonnets had to be represented 
in some such way to get at them all round. They had not been 
completely sculptured out as the familar statues of History, but 
had to be reflected in the poet's mental mirror and partly traced 
in shadow, if realized at all. Nor was it always possible to pro- 
cure evidence of my theory such as might satisfy the ordinary 
British twelve, and give proof tangible to the grosser sense. 
The subject must be dw r elt with a while, so difficult is it for the 
prejudiced to become impartial and free their minds from the 
potent tyranny of association and fixed ideas ; so apt are we to 
project the shape and shadow of our own preconceived thought, 
and see that rendered objective in what we look at, rather than 
bring the eye that can illuminate and distinguish clearly the 
novel features presented for recognition. The Sonnets must be 
studied in this new light which I have struck, and the internal 
evidence pondered over from this stand-point, where alone its 
peculiar nature, its subtle allusiveness to facts that seem so plain, 
can be gripped. 

People who fancy they hold a diamond in their grasp, natu- 
rally object to your wrenching their hand open for the purpose 
of demonstrating that it is but charcoal ! And that is precisely 
what I have to do with those who imagined they had grasped 
the facts of Shakspeare's biography in the revelations of the 
Sonnets. I tell you the jewel is elsewhere ; show you the live 
sparkles of it, and you insist on closing your hand all the more 
on the charcoal, making all sorts of excuses for not looking at it 
in my presence, lest I should prove it to be only charcoal. 

One old Shakspearean thus frankly opened his hand to me: — 

" Having just finished your very interesting book on ' Shakspeare's Sonnets, 
I cannot deny myself the pleasure of thanking you for your eloquent vindica- 
tion of Shakspeare's personal character, and for the new and clear li^ht by 



1 



of shakspeare's sonnets. 5 

which you enable the world to read and comprehend those exquisite pieces of 
poetry. 

" As one of the many admirers of these Sonnets, I have always been per- 
plexed by their import, regarding them as autobiographical ; but now that I 
can view them as having been written to and for others, their beauty and in- 
tensity appear to me to be wonderfully enhanced by the glowing spirit of love 
and devotedness which gives them a double life. Let me congratulate you on 
the completeness and fulness of your noble task, for which all lovers of Shak- 
speare must be grateful to you." 

But my work has had its share in the struggle that awaits 
all new truths to get born into the world. Literary obstetrists 
who might assist somewhat in the delivery, seem to think it a 
duty to try and strangle the new birth before it can see the light. 
Mine is only a little one in point of importance, but their efforts 
appear to increase as the new truth rises in value. It is the 
curse of much of our current criticism that the reviewer of every 
book feels bound to sit in judgment on it. No matter what the 
subject, or how unfitted he may be to deal with it, an opinion of 
the work of years is dashed off in a few hours, or, mayhap, 
minutes. This is the easiest way in the world of giving a false 
impression of that with which an author has taken great pains 
to get rooted in truth. Why not sometimes imitate older and 
wiser judges, and reserve judgment ? Why not allow a book 
now and then to speak for itself ? I am thinking more of others 
than myself just now, so pray don't imagine I am trying to 
establish a " raw," or that I am a man with a "grievance." But, 
really, you can hardly imagine how puerile and impertinent are 
the objections raised by those critics who have given the world 
the benefit of their very first study of the subject, having come 
from the Shakspeare-mystery with a mind full of mist, to inter- 
pose betwixt my book and their readers, by troubling themselves 
with their own theory of probabilities instead of dealing with 
my evidence. For example, it has actually been urged that 
Southampton cannot be the speaker of Sonnet 51 (p. 178), 
because he calls his horse a "jade," and that Shakspeare would 
have been more appropriately mounted on a "hack" when on 
his way to " Stratford." The critic failed to perceive that this 
was a case of the pathetic fallacy ; the horse being jaded by 
the speaker's feeling. Surely a nobleman might call his horse a 
" jade " after King Bichard the Second had given royal example. 
Lie says of his pet " roan, Barbary " — 

" The jade hath ate bread from my royal hand ; " 

and of himself — 

" Down, down, I come ; like glistering Phaeton, 
Wanting the manage of unruly jades." 

The Horses of the Sun treated as " Jades ! " The same critic 
argued that an Earl would not be " alone " on his journey, but 
" followed by a crowd of liveried retainers." What ! a lover not 



6 THE SECIiET DRAMA 

be alone with his love-thoughts ! Shakspeare knew better than 
that. He likewise asserted that Southampton, in Sonnet 29 
(p. 167), could not envy " this man's art and that man's scope;" 
therefore the speaker must be the struggling actor and writer. 
But this was 

" The art o' the court, whose top to dimb 
Is certain falling, or so slippery, that 
The fear's as bad as falling." 

Cymbeline, Act iii. Scene 3. 

Again, of what possible use is it to tell me that history keeps 
no record of William Herbert's love for Lady Eich? Does 
history contain any record of Shakspeare's keeping a mistress? 
In both cases the supposed facts have to be derived from the 
Sonnets. Or, where is the argument in saying that my inter- 
pretation of the latter Sonnets cannot be true because Lady Eich 
was seventeen years older than Herbert in 1599 ? when I have 
already shown that to be the fact of facts in my favour ; the 
fact on which the two versions of Sonnet 138 (p. 368) are 
founded ; and the alterations in the second version of the Sonnet 
were made to suppress that fact. 

I am told that Lacty Eich was " old enough to be Herbert's 
mother." But I knew that already ! Sonnet 143 (p. 372) is based 
on it ; the irony depends on it ! 

" Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind ; 

. turn back to me, 
And play the mother's part ! kiss me, be Mud : 
So will I pray that thou may'st have thy ' Will/ 
If thou turn back, and my loud crying still." 

I have been called a " cruel apologist " for saying that the 
poet wrote the latter Sonnets for "Will" Herbert instead of for 
himself. I make no apology. There are the Sonnets to be 
accounted for, and either they were written for "Will" Shak- 
speare or " Will " Herbert. The poet cannot be defended against 
my view on the score of character. J^or- do I defend his 
character against the writing of these Sonnets, or most of them. 
But here is the difference. If he wrote them for " Will" Herbert, 
at that young nobleman's solicitation, it is a question of private 
manners rather than of public morals; he would write them 
merely for a private purpose, with no thought of their ever being 
published. If he wrote them as a work of his own, he would 
be guilty of the passion, guilty of writing about it with great 
levity, and guilty of making public the proofs of it by parting 
with the Sonnets. The amount of blame in either case is not the 
question. Herbert, the players tell us, pursued our poet with so 
much favour and indulgence. And apart from my theory of the 
Sonnets, these words have had no localized meaning. The indul- 
gence, however, may have had another side to it. Shakspeare 
may have so far indulged the fast young peer as to write on his 
suggestion, as he had done for Southampton. Still it is unjust, 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 7 

untrue, to speak of Shakspeare as a " pander " in the case. He 
nowhere panders to the passion, or writes for its glorification. 
He accepts the infatuation of a youth for a woman of loose 
character as his theme, but he does not abet the intrigue. 

The most remarkable characteristic of these singular Sonnets 
is that the passion is so seldom brought to bear with any purpose. 
They are written on a burning theme, but they could not possibly 
w t oo the woman. They paint the situation, but contain no flattery 
of the person. The passion is capable of , any extravagance of 
speech to gain its ends, and yet the very opposite language is 
made use of; such as could not have furthered the speaker's 
aims. Persons who serenade a lady under the circumstances 
implied do not usually approach her Avindows with a band of 
vulgar "rough music." They do not remind her that she has 
broken her marriage vows, decry her charms, laugh at her age 
and her lies to conceal it, ask her not to play the wolf in leading 
lambs astray, quote her " good report " derisively, tell her that 
her breath " reeks " and her breasts are black, her face is foul, 
and on the w 7 hole she is as dark as night and as black as hell, 
with the view of gaining admission. Yet this is most certainly 
Shakspeare's treatment, and it cannot be the work of a pander : 
the Sonnets could not have seriously promoted any " love-suit." 
I still believe there was reality in Herbert's passion of which 
Shakspeare made sport ; utterly repudiating the notion that it 
could not have existed on account of the lady's riper years. But 
I may have treated the subject too earnestly. My latest reading 
of this perplexing group leads me to lay more stress on the 
assertion contained in lines 6, 7, and 8 of Sonnet 141 (p. 376). 

This protestation that lust is not his aim is precisely the same 
as in one of Herbert's own poems. Mr. Hallam remarked that 
some of Herbert's pieces were " grossly indecent, but they throw 
no light whatever on Shakspeare's Sonnets." Unfortunately, 
that is just how they do throw a light on these Sonnets. The spirit 
is one in both. I can find no positive proof in the latter Sonnets 
that the lady addressed was the speaker's guilty paramour. This 
is a case of close looking, or we shall be misled by language. 

The lady's guilt is in relation to others rather than to the 
speaker. His perjuries in Sonnet 152 (p. 377) are limited to 
oaths. The meaning of Sonnet 151 (p. 378) wdien really mas- 
tered is that he is betrayed into sin with others by her image, and 
in straying elsewhere he is pursuit of her ; it is on her account. 
'Tis at her name (Rich) he says his passion rises ; in defence of 
her he falls ; and he is content to be " her poor drudge " ; she is 
not to think him unconscionable if he is betrayed into pursuit 
of others for her sake. This is especially an instance in which 
w T e must have recourse to the mirror ; the truth must be traced 
in shadow. 

Something like what is here intended is stated more explicitly 



o THE SECRET DEAMA 

with regard to one of the Wives in Goethe's " Elective Affinities." 
You can compare for yourself and perpend. The Sonnet says : — 

" Love is too blind to know what conscience is, 
Yet who knows not conscience is born of love." 

And Falstaff in the " Merry Wives of Windsor " exclaims, " Why, 
now is Cupid a child of conscience ; he makes restitution 1 
Speak I like Heme the Hunter ? " ISTot in the least, I should say, 
but very like the Sonnet. 

Shakspeare had nearly reached the maturity and culmination 
of his poetic faculty when he wrote those later Sonnets, and his 
giant powers even at play may have imposed on me. I now doubt 
whether I made enough of the intent to burlesque the Sonnets 
of " Uncle Sidney," who had said that of his life and love he 
"must a riddle tell." And here the riddle has been riddled through 
and through. Lady Eich had in her later life so caricatured the 
description of her purity given in Sidney's poetry, so foully 
bedaubed the fairness he had painted, as to invite ridicule. The 
burlesque was ready-made, if you only compared the past ideal 
with the present reality. Also, the exaggeration in Sidney's 
descriptions is aimed at and replied to, in such Sonnets as 130 
(p. 369), feature by feature. Sidney makes the lady a goddess, 
with a gold covering ; says her sweet breath makes love's flames to 
rise, and tells Cupid that in " her breast thy pap well-sugared 
lies." The other writer repudiates such language, yet thinks his 
mistress as rare as " any she belied with false compare." Sidney 
proclaims her blackness to be above all beauty. This is adopted 
as to the physical, and carried out in the moral domain by 
the infatuated lover. I previously showed that Sonnets 135-6, 
full of puns on the name of " Will," were a parody on Sidney's 
37th Sonnet, in which he puns all through on the name 
of "Eich." I might have carried the suggestion still further, 
as one credible mode of accounting for the curious mixture. 
That it is Lady Eich whose name is punned upon as in Sidney's 
Sonnets — and not in his alone, for even John Davies must needs 
" descant " on her name " as others do, with the antithesis of 
" indigence" — and says she played her part " richly well," I 
am more certain than ever. And if it be her, then, as matter of 
course, the youthful " Will " cannot be Shakspeare. To my 
apprehension, the innuendo, which was the final cause of all the 
play on names in Sonnets 135-136, is that the lady is " Eich in 
Will," and the speaker is desirous of being " Will " in (the love 
of) Eich. Even so is the name of " Eich " distinctly pointed out 
in Sonnet 151 in antithesis to her "poor drudge." 

Sidney's last Sonnet contains these lines : — 

" Leave me, Love, which readiest but to dust ; 
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things. 
Grow Rich in that which never taketh rust : 
Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings." 



OF SHAKSPEARE S SONNETS. 9 

" Still harping on my daughter,"— still alluding to the name of 
" Rich" in this serious reflection on the subject of his Sonnets. 
This, too, Shakspeare has echoed in Sonnet 146 ; and here is 
good argument, I think, for its being placed the last of Herbert's 
Sonnets, as in my arrangement. 

" Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss, 
And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; 
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross ; 
Within be fed, without be Rich no more." 

In this Sonnet, also, there is an antithesis to " poor soul." This 
is surely sufficient to deepen with an added tint the colour- 
able pretext for writing the latter Sonnets which I ascribed to 
Shakspeare, which was, that as Sidney had besung and sonnetted 
the Lady Eich in earlier years, Herbert induced Shakspeare to 
paint her portrait on the back of the canvas in later years, 
representing him in passionate pursuit of her. This echoing 
of Sidney, coupled with the reproduction of those two lines from 
Sonnet 36 — 

" But do not so ; I love thee in such sort 
As, thou being mine, mine is thy good report," 

where they were used in all seriousness, to make a mock with 
them at the person addressed, does greatly increase the look of 
intentional parody. 

But if my treatment was a thought too serious, that of some 
critics has been indignantly so, both in treating of the latter 
portion and in the "jealousy of Elizabeth Vernon." 

In studying the Sonnets we have especially to guard against 
bringing in the " public " as an element in the matter. Shak- 
speare's only public for his Sonnets was the private friends. 
Also I tried (p. 269) to guard against the Dramatic Sonnets 
being treated too seriously, by saying that the " personal render- 
ing has deepened and darkened the impression of things which, 
when applied to the Earl and his mistress, do not mean much, 
and are merely subject for a Sonnet, not for the saddest of all 
Shakspearean tragedies." 

I have nowhere implied that Southampton was really in 
love with Lady Eich ; not that she was " old enough to be his 
mother," for the difference in their ages was just ten years. I 
have nowhere said that he " approached her with any speech of 
love," or any " avowal of guilty love, so openly as to have caused 
a family and public scandal," or that Southampton had done this 
and then asked Shakspeare " to endow his sin with poetic life," 
as has been alleged. I should have been very shallow to have 
suggested anything so absurd. I have said on p. 224 there was 
only matter enough in this "jealousy" to supply one of the 
subjects for Shakspeare's Sonnets among his " private friends." 
I have treated it all through as only a case of suspicion, natural 
and pardonable, on the part of Elizabeth Vernon, considering 



10 THE SECRET DRAMA 

the fascinating influence of her cousin; and I stated that the 
most desperate Sonnet of all (144) was only tragic in terms, 
and expressed nothing more than a doubt. Nor do I say that 
Southampton set the poet writing that group. According to 
Sonnet 33, I find Southampton is about to supply his " own 
sweet argument " for future Sonnets, and give "invention light." 
This new argument of the Earl's is also 

too excellent 
For every vulgar paper to rehearse. 

That is. according to my view, our poet is to write in a book 
provided for the purpose, and no longer commit his Sonnets to 
common writing paper. 

This book I trace through Sonnets 77 (where the poet is 
writing in it) and 122 (in which Southampton has given it 
away). This Sonnet (122) shows me that the book was a gift 
from Elizabeth Vernon to the Earl, and had been devoted to 
retain her image, and was a sort of log-book of their love ; 
" tallies" the speaker calls it. Well, then, if the book was a 
present from Elizabeth Vernon to Southampton, and he supplied 
his own " sweet argument," I see no great difficulty in supposing 
that the lady may also have given a subject to the poet and 
supplied her own argument. Eot that the subject in this case 
was matter of public scandal. I cannot charge the Earl with 
any guilty love for Lady Kich when I hold him in Sonnet 120 to 
tell his mistress that she wronged him by her unjust suspicions in 
this particular affair of the "jealousy." But I see no difficulty 
in supposing that Shakspeare may have cautioned and pleaded 
with Southampton and " pitched into " him, dramatically, when 
I find that he has done the same things directly in other 
Sonnets. One of two things : either the story told in this group 
of Sonnets is personal to Shakspeare, or it is not. If it be a 
woman speaker, and that it is so there is abundant proof, it 
cannot be the corrupt married man supposed ; therefore it cannot 
be Shakspeare. 

You say that you most seriously sympathize with my indigna- 
tion against the " personal theory " of the Sonnets. And yet you 
go with me little further than we can see from the autobiographic 
point of view ! You follow me through certain Sonnets wherein 
Shakspeare speaks in person to Southampton, and you halt 
when it comes to my dramatic interpretation. In spite of all my 
identifications of fact in the subject-matter, such as can only be 
found in the life of Southampton, — facts of character, of sex, of 
absences abroad, of social conditions and circumstances the most 
peculiar — in spite of your own indignation, against the personal 
theory, you wantonly cast discredit on my dramatic interpreta- 
tion, having nothing whatever to put into the place of it. 

The facts in favour of my rendering of the Southampton 
Sonnets are these. In the first instance, Shakspeare was, of all 



OF SHAKSPEAKE S SONNETS. 11 

poets, the least autobiographic, the most dramatic. Next, when 
he lias addressed a number of Sonnets to his friend Southampton, 
he, in allusion to the monotony of his method, says (Sonnet 38) 
that he cannot he wanting in freshness of matter and novelty of 
subject whilst the Earl lives to pour into his verse his " oum sweet 
argument." Then, in the dedication to Lucrece, the poet tells his 
patron that what he has done and what he has yet to do is the 
Earl's, for he is a part in all that Shakspeare has devoted to him, 
And if Shakspeare was then speaking of the Sonnets as devoted 
to Southampton, he could not have meant mere fugitive sonnets, 
or sonnets in any way devoted to himself, but such as were 
devoted to Southampton's affairs. Only in sonnets written 
dramatically or vicariously can we possibly find the meeting- 
place of Sonnet 38 and the words of the dedication. Starting 
from this point — Shakspeare's own statement of two facts that 
blend in one meaning — I proceed to identify the various " arffu- 
nients " supplied by Southampton, his private courtship and 
public career, possibly also by Elizabeth Vernon, for Shakspeare 
to shape into sonnets, and I find the Sonnets to be full of obvious 
facts that fit perfectly into my theory, and no other ; facts quite 
as palpable as the identification of Marlowe or the release of 
Southampton from the Tower in 1603. By the door opened in 
Sonnet 38, I enter the interior of the Sonnets, where alone the 
imagery on the windows can be traced, and I do literally iden- 
tify fact after fact of the Southampton series, and prove them 
from the life of Southampton, who, you know, is the man that 
Sonnet 38 says is to supply his own subject-matter and give 
light to the poet's invention. Meanwhile, instead of following 
me inside the building and having a look round, by way of 
showing me wherein my interpretation is wrong, you still want to 
remain on the outside, and, whilst rejecting the personal inter- 
pretation, try to limit your vision to the personal view. From 
such a stand-point it will be as impossible to do justice to my 
book as it will be to read the Sonnets themselves. I am quite 
satisfied that what I find in the Sonnets is there, for mine is not 
a subjective theory so intangible as not to be grasped; it is based 
on plain objective facts, with which the Sonnets abound, such 
facts as Southampton's travels abroad, his quarrels at Court, and 
his marriage. In Sonnets 123-4-5 the Earl as surely speaks to 
his wife from the Tower as he is greeted in Sonnets 107 upon his 
release. All through the Southampton series my reading is 
illustrated and enforced in a treble manner, because the personal 
and impersonal sonnets deal with the same sets of facts, and 
both are corroborated by the facts of his life and character. 
Believe me, I have not challenged the world without feeling 
securely armed. And if it be admitted, as it generally is, that 
any of Shakspeare's Sonnets were written dramatically or 

It is only a matter of detail 



12 THE SECRET DRAMA 

and of closer acquaintanceship with the subject. The theory 
coheres from- beginning to end. Pray do not compliment my 
" ingenuity " and " eloquence " at the expense of my theory. 
Permit me to suggest another probability. Instead of me being 
so immensely clever as you would imply, suppose the " ingenuity " 
is the pleading of Nature, and the " eloquence " is the voice of 
truth. That is a possibility I think well worth consideration. 

Again you say of the latter sonnets, you do " not believe that 
Shakspeare played the pimp to his own dishonour." But you 
are afraid that he did conceive the " dramatic situation." Why, 
that at once grants the Dramatic theory, only you would leave 
it baseless, whereas I give it foundations. It is impossible to 
suppose that he wrote the latter sonnets neither on a reality of 
his own life nor on that of his friend's. The Sonnets were 
written for the private friends, as Meres tells us. They were 
inscribed to the only man who had power to obtain them for 
Thorpe. And there is proof, I think, that the book was intended 
to limit the Sonnets to those which belonged to these private 
friends. In "The Passionate Pilgrim" (1599) there appeared 
some seven or eight sonnets undoubtedly written by Shakspeare; 
only two of these reappear in Thorpe's collection. There are 
fourteen other sonnets in Shakspeare's works not included here. 
This sufficiently shows that Thorpe made up no book of Shak- 
speare's Sonnets, in the general sense ; it shuts up the Sonnets 
quite safe from any " rascally friend " of Thorpe's in the hands 
of " Mr. W. H.," who, of course, only printed what belonged to 
the private friends, and did not gather in any fugitive sonnets. 
This thought came too late for my book, but I hold it to be most 
conclusive. 

You admit that I have established the fact of Southampton's 
being the Lord of our poet's love ; identified Marlowe as the 
rival poet ; and allow that the mass of the Sonnets are dramatic ! 
You may follow me a little further, I think, when I show that 
it is Southampton who speaks from abroad ; who pleads to be 
forgiven ; who talks of having had his brow branded by common 
scandal, and, at the same time, of stopping his ears to flatterers ; 
and who has been Impeached for Treason. 

If it be Southampton, as you allow, who is congratulated on 
his release from the " confined doom " on the death of Elizabeth, 
it must be him who speaks the Sonnets in prison, " all alone," 
where he can congratulate himself on his present bondage as 
preferable to that of courtiers and flatterers. And if in prison, 
he is in the Tower. Hence the " Pyramids luilt up ivitli nevjer 
might" Those built later than the Egyptian ones ! The name of 
Pyramids being employed as permanent type of age, strength, 
and duration. It is quite certain the old Pyramids had not 
been either rebuilt or more newly built, or built with " newer 
might." 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 13 

We have Shakspeare's description of the Tower in "King 
Richard the Third" (Act iii. Scene 1) :— 

Prince. Did Julius Cresar build that place, my lord ? 
Glo. He did, my gracious lord, begin that place ; 
Which, since, succeeding ages have re-edified. 
Prince. Is it upon record ? 
Buck. Upon record, my gracious lord. 
Prince. But say, my lord, it were not register'!). 

And in the Sonnet 123 (p. 303) the Tower — that stronghold of 
Time — the new Pyramids, which are but " dressings of a former 
sight," that is, comparatively modern representatives of the old 
ones — is the ancient Record and Register of Time ! 

The nature and quality of the speaker are still more marked 
than his environment, and Southampton alone could belong to 
" Our Fashion ;" that is, young men of rank, courtiers and soldiers ; 
as Hotspur, for example, was " the mark and glass, copy and book 
that fashion .eel others," or, as is illustrated by Plantagenet in his 
disdain of the Somerset faction — 

" I scorn thee and thy Fashion, peevish boy." 

Only Southampton could speak of his "love" being the 
" child of State " — his child a " bastard of Fortune " — subject 
to Time's love or hate — out of the pale of the law — (for gloss 
on which hear Faulconbridge : — 

" For he is but a bastard to the time, 
That doth not smack of observation, 
And so am I whether I smack or no.") 

Only Southampton could have suffered in the " smiling pomp " of 
Court favour or fallen under the blow of " thralled discontent," 
i.e. of the rebels up in arms in Ireland ; only he could have defied 
all State policy on account of some course taken by himself 
which he considers yet more politic ; and only he could have 
hurled his supreme disdain at the hireling spy who had been 
suborned to inform against him and thus led to his impeach- 
ment for treason. When writing on this part of my subject, I 
omitted a very important point in proof that Southampton is 
the speaker of these Sonnets ; one cannot always be up to 
Shakspeare, who so constantly " moralizes two meanings in one 
word " — like the old " Vice," as he says. 

" Were't aught to me I bore the canopy, 
With my extern the outward honouring, 
Or laid great bases for eternity, 
Which prove more short than waste or ruining 1 
Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour 
Lose all, and more, by paying too much rent 1 " 

asks the speaker of Sonnet 125 (p. 304). And I failed to remark 
how often Southampton as lord in waiting had helped to bear 
the canopy at Court — the cloth of State under which the Queen 
sat, That this is also meant is shown by the allusions to the 
obsequious courtiers — the favourites, the dwellers on "form," 



14 THE SECEET DRAMA 

ceremony, and " favour," who proved how vain their " waiting " 
and looking and longing was ; the " pitiful thrivers, in their 
gazing spent : " Essex, the great favourite, for instance, just 
dead. Queen Katharine calls herself 

" A poor, weak woman, fallen from favour." 
Wolsey says : — 

" how wretched 
Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours." 

"0 place! form ! 
How often dost thou with thy case, thy habit, 
Wrench awe from fools, and tie the wiser souls 
To thy false seeming ! " 

Measure for Measure, Act ii. Scene 4. 
" Throw away respect, 

Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty." 

King Richard II. Act iii. Scene 2. 

" Others there are, 
Who, trimmed in forms and visages of duty, 
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves ; 
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords, 
Do well thrive by them," — Othello, Act i. Scene 1. 
" In compliment extern." — Ibid. 
The last lines form a curious gloss on the Sonnet, if you look 
at it in the reflector which I spoke of. " Poor wretches that 
depend on Greatness' favour, dream as I have done ; wake and 
find nothing." That is a prison-thought of Posthlimus', and 
most like to that of Southampton's. There is also a passage in 
"King Lear " very like in substance to the group of Sonnets ii. 
which we have Southampton's prison- thoughts : 

"No, no, no, no ! Come, let's away to prison : 
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage : 

So we'll live, 
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh 
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues 
Talk of Court news ; and well talk with them too — 
Who loses and who wins ; ivho's in, who's out ; 

And we'll wear out 
In a walled -prison, packs and sects of great ones 
That ebb and flow by the moon." 

Much of that is incongruous imagery for Lear to use. What 
Court, what " great ones," what " gilded butterflies, " should 
the proud, broken, aged king care to hear of ? It passes, of 
course, as the pathetic, wild, and wandering talk of the garrulous 
old man, but there's more than that in it. If that " moon " be, 
and I would take my Shakspearian oath it is, the " mortal 
moon" that suffers eclipse in the 107th Sonnet, then Shakspeare 
is talking to, or for, his friend Southampton, in those lines, 
whilst poor "Lear" talks to Cordelia; and the passage was 
written before the death of Elizabeth, whatsoever inferences to 
the contrary may have been drawn from Harsnett's " Discovery 
of Popish Impostures." 



of shakspeabe's sonnets. 15 

This is a digression : I .am anxious, however, to prove the 
prison-scene and thoughts, and get you fairly shut up in the 
Tower. But to return. If it be Southampton who is living in 
loose society "with infection " and " sin," in Sonnet 67, he must 
be the speaker who in Sonnet 111 confesses to all the charges 
that have "been addressed to him, and who offers to drink 
"potions of eisell 'gainst my strong infection." If he be the 
person who is said to have been the mark of slander and the 
subject of public scandal in Sonnet 70 (p. 226), it follows that 
he must be the speaker who admits and deplores all this, and 
more, in Sonnets 109 and 112. If he be the "remover," the 
rover spoken of in Sonnet 116 (p. 285), of necessity he must 
have been the absentee speaker of those sonnets uttered on the 
"journey" and at "limits far remote" from England, and also 
the returned wanderer who had "hoisted sail to every wind that 
blew," and who comes back as the penitent lover, to say so and 
implore his mistress's forgiveness. 

Another point I failed to score. My argument is, that 
Sonnets 29, 30 ; 31 are spoken by Southampton chiefly in 
memory of his father's death; and he alludes to " Love's long- 
since cancelled woe." Now, how can such a ]oss, such a woe, 
have been cancelled at all ? I answer, only in one sense, which 
warrants the legal expression, and only in Southampton's case. 
The " woe " was the loss of his father, who died when Southampton 
was eight years old, and it was " cancelled " " long since " by the 
re-marriage of _ Lady Southampton to Sir Thomas Heneage, who 
became an affectionate stepfather to th.e young Earl, and, as 
such, as well as from his relationship to the players, was thought 
worthy of the allusion. I may add, that in fifty places does the 
dramatic interpretation touch ground as firm, with both feet, 
where no other touches ground at all ; in truth, it offers the only 
anchorage in the midst of a tossed and troubled sea of speculation. 

In my first edition I was unable to identify Sonnets 153-4 as 
necessarily related in subject to either the Southampton or Herbert 
series. I argued, that if Shakspeare had made up the collection 
he would not have included both these sonnets which form a 
double treatment of one idea, and that they must have "been 
oathered in by Herbert, although I did not then see why. I now 
believe that the Sonnets as printed have all of them to do with 
the " jjrivate friends " for whom they were written, and among 
whom they circulated in MS. And I now see why and how 
Herbert should print them, if he wrote one and Shakspeare the 
other, on the given theme of " Cupid's brand " and Lady Eich's 
black eyes. That they were written so, just as Keats, Hunt, 
and Shelley wrote their sonnet each on the " Nile," I am con- 
vinced. Nor would it be difficult to determine which of the two 
was Herbert's. This is not the English of Shakspeare : — 

" The bath for my help lies 
Where Cupid got new fire — my mistress' eyes/' — (153.) 



16 THE SECRET DRAMA 

In this I find another reason for believing what I before ad- 
vanced, that Herbert not only suggested subject matter for Shak- 
speare to write on, but also lent a hand in the writing of the 
latter Sonnets as they have come to us. 

I have been assured that historical facts run counter to my 
theory. But what facts has not been said. Certainly they are 
not to be found in the life of Southampton, or the characters of 
Herbert and Lady Eich. There the external evidence is entirely 
corroborative, so far as it goes. I did not, however, propose to 
make out the mystery of the Sonnets simply by what history has 
recorded. If the matter had been so publicly explained, there 
would have remained nothing for me to evolve from the Sonnets 
themselves ! Contemporary history took but little note of Shak- 
speare's whole life ; none whatever of his death. But why there 
should be any difficulty, for instance, in believing that South- 
ampton may have given his mistress some cause for her to be- 
come jealous of Lady Eich, who was such a wily siren, I cannot 
conceive, when history tells us that in the first year of King 
James's reign this same Earl was arrested on suspicion of in- 
triguing with the Queen for amatory purposes I Here is one of 
those tallies of character in which my interpretation of the 
Sonnets abounds. 

I have been charged with trying to " make black white " in 
writing of Lady Eich's hair, which was tawnily golden, and yet is 
alluded to as " black wires " in Sonnet 130. As if it were not 
in the very nature of irony to state or imply the precise opposite 
to the known truth, or where would be the joke ? And surely 
that which is jestingly done in the Plays may be done in the 
Sonnets ? If not, why not ? The " divine Kate " of Dumain's 
love is treated in the same vein : — 

" Her amber hair for foul " is darkly quoted : 

As witness thereof Lord Biron I call. 
" An amber-coloured raven was well noted," 

He says, with merry mock and laugh ironical. 

I need not mind the apparent contradiction thus ironically 
supplied, when I am able to identify the Lady Eich by the por- 
trait Sidney drew and Shakspeare repeated ; by the lady's mourn- 
ing eyes, and that blackness above all beauty ; the " fair woman 
with a black soul ;" the violation of the marriage vows ; her age 
in relation to Herbert as speaker, and the lies respecting her age 
(Sonnet 138); the implication in Sonnet 127 that the lady's 
hair is not black ; the innuendoes and puns on the name of Eich 
— the " Eich in Will " and its antithesis ; the name (Eich) in 
opposition to " poor drudge" Sonnet 151 ; the " poor soul" and 
the " rich no more " (Sonnet 146) ; the oneness with Bosalind in 
" Love's Labour's Lost," who as the " attending star " identifies 
" Stella," the lady in waiting at Court. All this where no hint 
of such a recognition had ever before been given ! And yet I 



of shakspeabe's sonnets. 17 

know well enough that the very next idiot who comes to the 
subject fresh from knowing nothing about it will, to show off his 
critical acumen, venture to doubt my identification because 
Lady Eich's hair was not black. 

I knew that if I should be fortunate enough to disprove all 
other theories of the Sonnets, and drive my opponents point 
by point from their positions, their last rallying\cry would be the 
integrity of Thorpe's arrangement and the necessity of preserving 
that order in which the Sonnets were first printed. All present 
editors of the Sonnets are bound to stand by that, it having 
become a vested interest. If it be admitted that the Sonnets 
cannot be read in the old order, where will be the use of con- 
tinuing to print them thus ? Of course Thorpe's arrangement 
must be fought for. One editor of the Sonnets, the late Eobert 
Bell, writing in the Fortnightly Review, was constrained to admit 
that— 

" Whatever may be the ultimate reception of Mr. Massey's interpretatio7i 
of the Sonnets, nobody can deny that it is the most elaborate and circumstan- 
tial that has been yet attempted. Mr. Armitage Brown's essay, close, subtle, 
and ingenious as it is, recedes into utter insignificance before the bolder out- 
lines, the richer colouring, and the more daring flights of Mr. Massey. What 
was dim and shapeless before, here grows distinct and tangible ; broken 
gleams of light here become massed, and pour upon us in a flood ; mere 
speculation, timid and uncertain hitherto, here becomes loud and confident, 
and assumes the air of ascertained history. A conflict of hypotheses had 
been raised by previous annotators respecting the facts and persons supposed 
to be referred to in the Sonnets, and the names of Southampton, Herbert, and 
Elizabeth Vernon flitted hazily through the discussion. It has been reserved 
for Mr. Massey to build up a complete narrative out of materials which fur- 
nished others with nothing more than bald hints, and bits and scraps of 
suggestions." 

Still, there is one fatal flaw in the treatment ; the author did 
not religiously keep to Thorpe's arrangement. Now, if it could 
be shown that Shakspeare had himself printed the Sonnets, or 
had anything to do with their publication, that would constitute 
an argument against alteration. But it cannot, and the plea is 
sheer hypocrisy. There is evidence absolutely incontrovertible, 
proof positive, that neither the poet nor the initiated private 
friend saw the Sonnets through the press. There are from forty 
to fifty errors which could not have passed if they had been 
submitted to Shakspeare. In Sonnet 46 the word " thy" occurs 
four times, and three times out of the four it is printed "their;" 
it being the custom to abbreviate those words in writing, and 
the reader for the press did not know which word was intended. 
That is printer's proof of what I state. And such is the nature 
of our poet's promises made to Southampton, so careful was he 
in correcting his other poems, that we must conclude he would 
have superintended the publication, and not subjected his pro- 
mises of immortality to all the ills of printer's mortality, had he 
given his sanction to it as it comes to us. Had he authorised 



18 THE SECRET DRAMA 

the printing, Thorpe would have said so ; therefore he did not. 
That is publisher s proof. We get no guarantee, then, from the 
author as to the arrangement, and it is useless to talk about the 
duty of sacredly accepting them as they have been handed 
down to us. At least we have the right to test the arrangement 
of an unauthorised work by an appeal to internal evidence ; for 
it is only by that the author himself can speak to us. If I could 
show that one single sonnet had got out of place, there would 
be good cause to suspect they had not reached us in perfect 
order, and that a part of the problem was hidden in their dislo- 
cation. Whereas, I can give plenty of proof that the printed is 
not the written order. No one has doubted that I have iden- 
tified the subject matter of Sonnet 107 as a congratulation to 
Southampton on his release from prison, at the time of Eliza- 
beth's death, in the year 1603. At that date Shakspeare must 
have known the Earl some ten or eleven years at least. The 
" Venus and Adonis " had been dedicated to him ten years 
before. Yet this sonnet is printed next but two to the one (Sonnet 
104, p. 169) which speaks of his having seen the youth for 
the first time three years before the date of writing it ! Again : 
Sonnet 126 is a fragment, and printed last of the Southampton 
series. In this the Earl is called a " boy," and this comes after 
the sonnet of 1603, at which time Southampton was thirty years 
of age, married, father of a family, and a renowned war-captain. 
Of necessity the sonnet belongs to that earlier time when Shak- 
speare did salute him as "sweet bo}^," and has got displaced. 
Indeed, it is not a sonnet at all, but consists of six rhyming 
couplets. The idea of growing by loaning has been re-wrought in 
Sonnet 11. Sonnet 57 (p. 373) is one of those that contain puns 
on the name of " Will," which are addressed to a woman of loose 
character. This fact had been overlooked from the time of the 
first edition till pointed out by me. By the original printing, as 
well as from internal evidence, it is identified as belonging to the 
latter series, and yet it is printed by Thorpe with 76 sonnets 
behuixt it and its congeners. I have shown Sonnets 123, 124, 
and 125, to be spoken by Southampton when in prison, and the 
sonnet which greets his release from thence is numbered 107. ISTo 
one can study Sonnets 24, 46, and 47 (p. 185) and doubt that they 
form a trinity with the unitary idea running through them, and 
necessitating their having been written together, yet 21 other 
sonnets are printed betiveen the first and second of these three 
stanzas of one poem. So with Sonnets 43 and 61 : the second 
is a palpable continuation of the first (p. 181). The group to 
w T hich these belong is spoken by some one on a journey. We 
may fairly assume that they would be written with some sort of 
sequence to be intelligible to the reader for whom they were intended, 
yet those sonnets which are spoken by the person when at the 
remotest distance from his lady are numbered 44 and 45, whereas 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 19 

the first of the series spoken at starting on the journey is num- 
bered 50 ! 

These are facts — facts in Shakspeare's own handwriting, which 
tell ns the Sonnets were printed with no key to the written 
arrangement, and that no restriction can be imposed on any 
such account. There is ample evidence to prove that some of 
the Sonnets are out of their place ; there is ample warrant for 
me to collate them by the internal evidence. If any persons, 
however, should think that such a reality or romance can be 
told by the resetting of a few sonnets, I would advise them to 
try their hands on the sonnets of Spenser, or Daniel, or Drayton. 
I see that I might safely have carried my dramatic theory 
a little further, in the Southampton series of Sonnets. You 
know I assumed Elizabeth Yernon to be the speaker of Sonnets 
33, 34, 35, 41, 42, 133, 134, 40 (p. 206). I would now venture 
to make her the speaker more or less of the group (p. 239) 66, 67, 
68, 69, 94, 77, because the charges are made in these sonnets that 
the person addressed is dwelling with base infection, that he has 
grown common in the mouths of men through his ill deeds, 
and these identical charges are replied to, word for word,, in later 
sonnets, which 1 hold to be spoken by Southampton (see p. 269). 
JSTow, as these later sonnets are not addressed in reply to 
Shakspeare, but to a woman, it follows that the person who 
utters the charges should be the woman, and not Shakspeare : thus 
the drama would be most perfectly complete. Also, a book is 
here presented (Sonnet 77, p. 241) which has been parted with in 
Sonnet 122 (p. 321). It is more dramatic and more credible 
to think that Shakspeare should only be the writer in both 
cases, leaving the two lovers to speak their parts, and so com- 
plete the circle in a natural embrace. 

I made an error in giving Sonnet 95 (p. 236) to Southampton, 
and ought to have printed it with this group as spoken to him. 
It is the great likeness of this Sonnet 95 to Juliet's outburst 
on hearing that Eomeo has killed her cousin Tybalt, that 
weighs heavily in turning the scale in favour of Elizabeth 
Yernon as speaker of the sonnet. With a woman for speaker 
the likeness is doubled. 

" O, what a mansion have those vices got 
Which for their habitation chose out thee, 
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot, 1 
And all things turn to fair that eyes can see ! " 

says the lady of the sonnet, and Juliet raging exclaims — 

" O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face ! 
Was ever book containing such vile matter 
So fairly bound I 0, that deceit should dwell 
In such a gorgeous palace ! " 

1 "Every blot." It was the speaker in Sonnet 36 (p. 176) who regretted his 
"blots," and who in Sonnet 109 (p. 269) protests that despite these blots he cannot 
" so preposterously be stained " as to " leave for nothing all thy sum of good." 

c 2 



20 THE SECRET DRAMA 

With regard to my suggestion that Wriothesley was the word 
which began with "some other letter" than "R," Mr. and Mrs. 
Cowden Clarke have been good enough to re-explain for my 
benefit, in a foot-note to "Romeo and Juliet," that Rosemary 
was the name of the dog, and " R " was the dog's letter, which 
leaves the matter just where I found it. But the point is, there 
is " some other letter " wdiich is not " R," and is not in the play, 
and Juliet "hath the prettiest sententious of it, of YOU and 
Rosemary." Mr. Hunter had previously conjectured that the cha- 
racter of Benedick, a young lord, in " Much Ado about Nothing," 
was drawn to represent Herbert, which is more than likely. 
And here we have a similar reference to a letter not in the play. 
" Hey ho ! " sighs Beatrice, and Margaret asks if that is for a 
hawk, a horse, or a husband ? Beatrice replies, " For the letter 
that begins them all — H." Now she is in love with Benedick, 
whose name does not begin with " H." If for Benedick we read 
Herbert, we make out the meaDing of it, not otherwise. In this 
play, too, there may be a double entendre on the name of Lady 
Rich. Speaking of his wife, in case he should ever marry, 
Benedick says — " Rich she shall be, that's certain ; an excellent 
musician ; and her hair shall be of what colour it please God." Nor 
is there only the play on Lady Rich's name, but the old riddle 
of the hair also, and a still further identification. Sonnet 128 
(p. 368) is addressed to the lady playing on the virginal ; she is 
called "my Music " by the speaker, who says how he envies the 
"jacks " that leap to kiss her hand. 

" Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, 
(a Rich harvest ?) 

At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand ! 
To be so tickled, they would change their state 
And situation with those danciug chips, 
O'er whom thy fingers walls: with gentle gait, 
Making dead wood more blest than living lips." x 

If Benedick be intended for Herbert, Shakspeare's comment 
on his character is very appropriate to one part of my subject. 
" The man doth fear God, howsoever it seems not in him, by 
some large jests he ivill make " — the " large jest " of the latter 
Sonnets, for example ! Surely my suggestion respecting South- 
ampton is not a whit wider of the mark ; the two go to- 
gether, tend to corroborate each other, and double the likelihood. 
It is impossible to follow Shakspeare or " delve him to the root," 
if we cannot now and then see double. 

Will you have the patience to follow me while I enter upon a 

1 This conceit was borrowed from Ben Jonson's "Every Man Out of His 
Humour," produced in the year 1599 — the year of Herbert's Sonnets : — 

" Fast. You see the subject of her sweet fingers there (a viol de gamba). Oh, 
she tickles it so, that she makes it laugh most divinely. I'll tell you a good 
jest now, and yourself shall say it's a good one : I have wished myself to be 
that instrument, I think, a thousand times." — Act iii. Scene 3. 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 21 

still closer course of corroboration and try to prove my reading 
of the Sonnets by Shakspeare's poetic practice in the Plays ? 

The more I study our poet's work, the more I find that his 
dramatic instinct must be true to sex, not only in the spirit and 
essence, but also in the outward appareling of imagery. There 
are certain natural illustrations which he never applied to man, 
but keeps sacred to woman ; certain phrases used, which of 
necessity prove or imply that the opposite sex is addressed. 
It needs no special discernment : the commonest native instinct 
is guide enough to show that he would not talk of his appetite 
for a man, or speak of personifying desire in getting back to him 
— this being opposed to the law of kind aud very liable to the 
most classical interpretation. 

Southampton says, if he were only returning toward his mis- 
tress instead of goino; from her — 

" Then could no horse with my desire keep pace ; " 
and so Hermia, following her lover in the wood, says : — 
" My legs can keep no pace with my desires." 

Likewise, compare Imogen's haste to get to Milford Haven 
and meet her husband. When told she can ride some twenty 
miles a day, she replies : — 

" Why, one that rode to execution, man, 
Could never go so slow." 

Nor would he call a man his " sun," his " cherubim" his " best 
of dearest," his "jewel hung in ghastly night," his "rose." All 
such imagery is feminine, and has been held so by all poets that 
ever wrote in our language; and I consider his instinct in such 
a matter to be so purely true that he could not thus violate the sex 
of his images. That there are certain warranted exceptions is 
true ; that there are moods in which the expression demanded 
rises above sex is also true. He makes a woman a " god " in 
love, in her power to re-create the lover. In such wise he has 
a man-muse, a man-fish, a man-mistress, a mankind witch, a 
mankind woman, as well as the godkind woman. In fact, he 
dare do anything on occasion, only there must be the occasion. 
But his ordinary practice is to do as other poets have done in 
this matter. It has been assumed that those lovely flower- 
sonnets, 98, 99 (p. 249), were addressed to a man : but not only 
is the whole of the imagery sacred to the sex, as I call it ; not 
only is it so used by Shakspeare all through his work ; not only 
did Spenser address his lady-love in exactly the same strain, 
in his Sonnets 35 and 64, likening her features to flowers, 
saving — 



and- 



" Such fragrant flowers do give most odorous smell, 
But her sweet odour did them all excel ; " 

" All this world's glory seemeth vain to me. 
And all their shows but shadows, saving she \" 



22 THE SECRET DRAMA 

.Not only so, but the images had all been previously applied 
seriatim by Constable in his "Diana" (1584). Let me draw 
out a few parallels. 

" The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, 
One blushing shame, another white despair." 

Shakspeare. 
" My lady's presence makes the roses red, 
Because to see her lips they blush for shame." 

Constable. 

" The lily I condemned for thy hand." — Shakspeare. 

" The lilies' leaves for envy pale became, 
And her white hands in them this envy bred." 

Constable, 

The violet in Shakspeare's Sonnet is said to have its purple 
pride of complexion because — 

" In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed." 

In Constable's the lover says — 

" The violet of purple colour came, 
Dyed with the blood she made my heart to shed." 

" More flowers I noted, yet I none could see, 
But sweet or colour it had stolen from thee." 

Shakspeare. 

" In brief, all flowers from her their virtue take, 
From her sweet breath their sweet smells do proceed." 

Constable. 

Here the likeness is all lady, and we have been asked to sup- 
pose that Shakspeare, whose instinct in poetry was as unerringly 
true as is the power of breathing in sleep, offered those delicates 
to a man who, as I have shown, was a bronzed and bearded 
soldier. 

In Sonnet 33 (p. 206) the speaker, whom I say is Elizabeth 
Vernon, calls the person addressed her " sun," and says, " Suns 
of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth." Here 
note that the speaker of the later Southampton Sonnets says he 
could " not so preposterously be stained." That this is lovers' 
language may be shown by Juliet's being Borneo's " sun :" 
" Eosalind " is Biron's <f sun," Luciana is Antipholus' " fair sun," 
and Sylvia is Proteus' " celestial sun." 

" My rose," the speaker of Sonnet 109 calls the person ad- 
dressed. 

Most readers are aware, it was a courtly fashion of Shak- 
speare's day for the young nobles to wear a rose in the ear for 
ornament, an image of gallantry. Shakspeare could not natter 
Southampton by representing him as symbolically dangling 
at his ear. But how appropriate it was when addressed to 
Elizabeth Vernon by the lover who had plucked the rose, and 
pricked his fingers too, but had not yet worn her as he wished — 



of shakspeare's SOSHETS. 23 

liis life's chief ornament. Having made the most thorough exa- 
mination of Shakspeare's wont and habit, I mean to prove it in 
this and other instances from his dramas. I doubt if there be 
an instance in Shakspeare of man addressing man as " my rose." 
and should as soon expect to find "my tulip." The Queen of 
Eichard the Second speaks of her fair rose withering, and 
Ophelia of Hamlet as the " rose of the State." But even here it 
is o,ic sex describing the other. For the rest, the "rose" is the 
woman-symbol. "Women are as roses," says the Duke in 
" Twelfth Mght." Fair ladies masked, according to Boyet, are 
" roses in the bud ;" and Helena, in " All's Well," speaks of " our 
rose." " You shall see a rose indeed," is said of Marina. " 0, rose 
of May," Laertes calls Ophelia ; Cleopatra is likened to the 
" blown rose ;" a married woman is the " rose distilled," the un- 
married " one that withers on the virgin thorn." 

In Sonnet 114 (p. 179) the person apostrophised is likened to 
a " cherubin " — " such cherubins as your sw T eet self." And 
Prospero exclaims to Miranda : " 0, a cherubin thou wast that 
did preserve me." " For all her cherubin look," says Timon of 
Phryne. In " Othello " we have, " Patience, thou young and 
rose-lipped cherubin ; " in the "Merchant of Venice," "young- 
eyed cherubins ; " but no man is called a cherubin in Shakspeare, 
nor does any man address another as a god. iEneas sneers at 
Agamemnon as a god in office, and Caliban is made to address 
a drunken man thus: "I prythee be my god." "A god on 
earth thou art," says the Duchess of York to Bolinbroke, who 
has just given her son new life ; and then, illustrating the sense 
in wdiich the w^orcl is used in the sonnet, she says to her son : 
"I pray God make thee new." Helena says, "We, Hermia, like 
two artificial gods, created both one flower." Miranda says, 
" Had I been any god of power." But the sexual parallel to the 
god in love of Sonnet 110 is only to be found in Iago's 
description of Desdemona's power over Othello. The speaker 
of the sonnet says : — 

" Mine appetite I never more will grind 
On newer proof, to try an older friend, 
A god in love, to whom I am confined." 

(He was affianced years before he was married.) And Iago says 
of Othello and his infatuation for Desdemona : — 

" His soul is so enfettered to her love, 
That she may make, unmake, do what she list, 
Even as her appetite shall play the god 
With his weak function." 

The confessional pleading of the whole group of these 
Sonnets as spoken by the ranging wanderer Southampton to his 

1 You can't fancy Shakspeare calling Southampton a "god in love," to whom 
he was " confined.''''' With the Earl for sx'eaker the phrase means affianced. But 
from man to man what could it mean ? 



21- THE SECRET DBAMA 

much-tried and forgiving mistress is briefly summarised by 
.Antony to Octavia, when about to marry her on his return 
from Egypt : — 

" My Octavia, 
Read not iny blemishes in the world's report : 
I have not kept my square ; but that to come 
Shall all be done by the rule." 

Antony and Cleopatra, Act ii. Scene 3. 

Again, as an illustration of the testimony of sex to the tightness 
of my reading of the Sonnets, take the image in Sonnet 93 
(p. 235) :— 

" How like Eve's apple doth thy beauty grow, 
If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show ! " 

How could this be so if man were addressing man? How 
should the beauty of a man grow like the apple which tempted 
Eve 1 But the person addressed being a woman, the image 
becomes singularly felicitous. Then we for the first time see 
that Eve's apple means the apple with which she tempted 
Adam ! So is it all through, with such exception as I shall 
point out. 

" Next my heaven, the best," Southampton calls his mistress 
in Sonnet 110 (p. 270) ; and so Queen Katharine, speaking of the 
King, says she had " loved him next heaven." Antipholus in 
the " Comedy of Errors " calls Luciana 

" My sole earth's heaven and my heaven's claim." 
" But mutual render, only me for thee," is the love of Southampton 
to his wife, in Sonnet 125 (p. 305), the very language in which 
Posthumus addresses his wife : — 

" Sweetest, fairest, 
As I my poor self did exchange for you." 

Prospero says of the two lovers Ferdinand and Miranda : — 

" At the first sight they have changed eyes," 

And Claudio says to Hero : — 

" Lady, as you are mine, I am yours ; 
I give away myself for you, 
And dote upon the exchange." 

Southampton musing over his absent mistress, says he was 
very careful to lock up his treasures on leaving home — 

" But thou, to whom my jewels trifles are, 
Art left the prey of every vulgar thief ! " 

Sonnet 48, p. 182. 

He doubts whether the " filching age " may not steal his 
choicest treasure, the jewel of his love. And Iachimo says to 
Posthumus, speaking of the absent Imogen — 

" You may wear her in title yours : but you know, strange fowl light 
upon neighbouring ponds. Your ring may be stolen too. A cunning thief, 
or a that- way- accomplished courtier, would hazard the winning." 

Cymbeline, Act i. Scene 4. 

It is a matter of absolute Shakspearean, and therefore natural, 



OF SHAKSPEARES SONNETS. 2o 

necessity that such a sonnet as No. 48 (p. 182) can only be 
spoken to a woman by a man. Shakspeare was the manliest of 
men ; not the most effeminate of poets. In his Plays, men do 
not call each other their " best of dearest," most " worthy 
comfort/' or " only care." Shakspeare could not have called 
Southampton his " only care," he had a wife and family to care 
for, and a lively sense of that responsibility. In the Plays, the 
only expressions equal to these in depth of tenderness are such 
as those spoken by Posthumus to Imogen — " Thou the ' dearest 
of creatures.' " " Best of comfort " Caesar calls his sister ; " Thou 
dearest Perdita " is Florizel's phrase ; and the Duke of Prance, 
speaking of Cordelia to King Lear, says : " She that even but now 
was your best object, balm of your age, most best, most dearest ;" 
and Cordelia was the offspring of our poet's most fatherly 
tenderness. In " All's Well " the mother of Bertram calls her 
absent son her " greatest grief." Thus these expressions are 
sacred to the use of mother, father, lover, brother, and husband. 
Then the feeling and kind of jealousy can only be true to lovers 
who have the sensitive apprehension of sexual love and put 
forth its tenderest feelers. She is, in the previous Sonnet, 
assumed to send her spirit forth in the night-time to see what 
he may be "up to" — to "pry into" his deeds, his shames, and 
" idle hours," i.e. his companionship. For, being a soldier, he is 
likely to be with a gay loose lot, and he is jealous too, as only a 
lover can be, as he thinks of her so far away and who may be 
so near, too near, her with thievish intent, while he wakes and 
watches elsewhere — 

" Like one that stands upon a promontory, 
And spies a far-off shore where he would tread, 
Wishing his foot were equal with his eye, 
And chides the sea that sunders him from thence." 

King Henry VI. Part 3, Act iii. Scene 2. 

The same picture is painted by Surrey to his love in absence : — 

" For when I think how far 

This earth doth us divide, 
Alas ! meseems Love throws me down, 

I feel that how I slide ; 
The farther off the more desired." 

" Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed," pleads Southampton 
with his mistress in Sonnet 111 (p. 271); and in Leonatus' letter 
to Imogen, he writes : " You, the dearest of creatures, would 
even renew me with your eyes," 

" Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 
Potions of eisel," 

says Southampton ; and Imogen's husband says to her — 

" Thither write, my queen, 
And with mine eyes I'll drink the words you send, 
Tho' ink be made of gall." 

Cymbeline, Act i, Scene 2. 



2G THE SECKET DliAMA 

" But these particulars are not my measure. 
All these I better in one general best : 
Thy love is better than high birth to me, 
Eicher than wealth .... 

And having thee, of all men's pride I boast." 

Southampton to his Mistress, Sonnet 91 (p. 234). 

" But you, you, 
So perfect and so peerless are created 
Of every creature's best." — Ferdinand to Miranda. 

" Knowing thy will, 
I will acquaintance strangle and look strange." 

Southampton to Elizabeth Vernon, Sonnet 89 (p. 246). 

" Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown, 
Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects." 

Adriana to her Husband. 

Southampton, in absence, speaks of those "swift messengers " 
returned from his love — 

" Who even but now come back again, assured 
Of thy fair health, recounting it to me." 

So Imogen, on receiving a letter from her husband, says : — 

" Let what is here contained relish of love, 
Of my lord's health, of his content." 

Compare the outburst of the returned wanderer Southampton 
addressing his mistress, with Othello's greeting to his young 
wife on landing at Cyprus after his stormy passage : — 

" my soul's joy, 
If after every tempest come such calms, 
May the winds blow till they have wakened death." 

Southampton, on coming back to Elizabeth Vernon, after all 
his wanderings about the world, his blenches from the straight 
path, his goings here and there, and making a public fool of 
himself, says : — 

" How have mine eyes out of their spheres been flitted 
In the distraction of this madding fever ! 
0, benefit of ill ! now I find true 
That better is by evil still made better." 

And Cymbeline, addressing his new-found, long-lost sons, 
says : — 

" Blessed may you be, 

That after this strange starting from your orbs, 

You may reign in them now." 

Whilst it is said of the returned Posthumus, after all his self- 
inflicted trials — 

" He shall be lord of Lady Imogen, 
And happier much by his affliction made." 

There is a passage in the 2nd Book, Canto 1st, of the " Faery 
Queen," illustrative of my reading of Sonnet 34 (p. 206), given 
by me to Elizabeth Vernon. She asks her lover — 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 27 

" Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, 
And make me travel forth without my cloak I 
****** 
For no man well of such a salve can speak, 
That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace ; 
Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief." 

In the " Faery Queen " we have — 

" All ivrongs have mends, but no amends of shame. 
Now, therefore, lady, rise out of your pain, 
And see the salving of your blotted name. " 

This is written on behalf of a woman whu is supposed to have 
been wronged by a man ! And here too the woman is in 
disguise : — 

" Her purpose was not such as she did feign, 
Ne yet her person such as it was seen ; 
But under simple show and semblant plain 
Lurkt false Duessa secretly unseen, 
As a chaste virgin that had wronged been." 

One easily perceives how Shakspeare would take the hint 
from Spenser and apply it to his real case of a maiden that had 
" wronged been." Also he makes another of his women, Duchess 
Elenor, exclaim : — 

" My shame will not be shifted with my sheet." 

I make Elizabeth Vernon say to her lover with regard to the 
lady of whom she is jealous, and who is an intimate friend of 
both — 

" Thou dost love her, because thou know'st I love her." 

Somtet 42 (p. 208). 

And what says Eosalind to Celia of her lover, in the same 
spirit of playful tenderness ? " Let me love him for that, and 
do you love him because I do." 

In "All's Well that Ends WelP' there is a passage which in 
character and situation corresponds to the pleading of Elizabeth 
Vernon in Sonnets 133-34 (p. 209), on behalf of her lover, as 
face answers to face in a glass. Helena blames herself as being 
the cause of Bertram's going away to the wars, and prays for 
him : — 

" Do not touch my lord ! 
Whoever shoots at him I set him there. . 
Whoever charges on his forward breast, 
I am the catiff that do hold him to it ; 
And tho' I kill him not, I am the cause." 

Compare this with the pleading of the other lady : — 

" But then my friend's heart let my poor heart bail ; 
Whoe'er keeps me, let my heart be his guard." 

" He learned but surety-like to write for me." 
He only became a debtor for my sake, she urges ; I am the 
cause of his being in danger. I call this as testimony of sex 



28 THE SECRET DRAMA 

to the Tightness of my interpretation. The most curious thing 
is, that Helena writes her letter of parting in the form of a 
sonnet. In this again she repeats — 

" I, his despiteful Juno, sent him forth 
From courtly friends with camping foes to live." 

And she offers to embrace death to set her lover free, just as the 
other lady offers to be kept a prisoner, so that her lover may go 
free. Again, this sentiment of love being the armour protecting 
the breast is very prettily turned by Imogen, a woman and a 
wife : — 

" Come;, here's my heart ; 

Something's afore't : soft, soft ; we'll no defence ; 

Obedient as the scabbard. — What is here ? 

The scriptures of the loyal Leonatus, 

All turned to heresy 1 Away, away, 

Corrupters of my faith ! You shall no more 

Be stomachers to my heart." 

That is, her husband, in the shape of his love-letters, must be 
torn away for the blow to be struck. This too is a likeness 
that must be reflected in the mirror. 

In Elizabethan love-language the names of endearment, 
"love," and " friend " are often used indifferently, and without 
distinction of sex. It was, however, a custom of the earlier 
time to reverse them, " friend " being used for " love," as though 
it were the dearer epithet. I gave instances of this at page 212. 
A lover in one of Dekker's plays apostrophizes his lady's 
portrait : — 

" Thou figure of my friend ! " 

Surrey calls his lady " my friend," and speaks of himself 
as her friend. John Davies, speaking of Paris, says, " Pair 
Helen beheld her love, her dear, her friend." This custom is 
quite familiar to Shakspeare in the Plays. Beatrice, in love with 
Benedick, calls him her " friend " — " For I must ne'er love that 
which my friend hates ; " which, by the bye, is exactly what 
Southampton says in speaking of himself to his mistress (p. 246). 

" For I must ne'er love him whom thou dost hate." 

" He hath got his friend with child," says Lucio of Claudio. 
" Gentle friend," Hermia calls her lover. " A sweeter friend," 
Proteus calls Silvia ; whilst " friend " is the most endearing 
name that Juliet can find for Eomeo as a climax to the line — 
" Art thou gone so, Love, Lord, my Husband, Friend ? " 

My analysis of the Southampton Sonnets shows that in those 
which are personal Shakspeare almost invariably calls South- 
ampton his " love." This he does twice in Sonnet 13, twice in 
Sonnet 19, once in Sonnet 2-1, once in Sonnet 22 ; " my love ; " in 
Sonnet 47 ; "my love," " my sweet love," " my lover," in Sonnet 
63 ; " my love," in Sonnets 63, 64, 65, and 66 ; " dear love," in 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 29 

Sonnet 72 ; " sweet love/' in sonnet 76 ; " sweet love," in 
Sonnet 79 ; " love," in Sonnet 82 ; " my love," twice in Sonnet 
100, once in Sonnet 101, and once in Sonnet 105. On the other 
hand, in what I term the Dramatic Sonnets, Southampton calls 
Elizabeth Yernon " dear friend" in Sonnet 30. In Sonnet 42, 
Elizabeth Yernon calls Southampton " my friend " three times. 
In Sonnet 56, Southampton speaks of his lady as his "friend." 
In Sonnet 110, she is an older friend" {i.e. in antithesis to 
" newer proof "), and in Sonnet 111 "dear friend." Elizabeth 
Yernon calls Southampton "my friend" twice. In Sonnet 133, 
he is " her sweetest friend," and she speaks of him as a friend in 
Sonnet 134. In alternation with this, Shakspeare calls South- 
ampton "fair friend" once only in Sonnet 104. Southampton uses 
the term " love," as applied to Elizabeth Yernon, three times in 
Sonnets 89 and 99. I venture to claim the balance as the un- 
conscious testimony of a custom of the time in faA r onr of my 
interpretation of the speaker's sex, and of their being lovers, in 
the respective Sonnets. Hitherto, the one modern sense of the 
word "friend" has prevailed with readers of the Sonnets, the 
other curiously corroborative use of it being ignored, and made 
them think that Shakspeare must be addressing his " friend " 
Southampton. I need not say that no such tender application 
of the name of " friend " occurs in the latter Sonnets. 

M. Philarete Chasles has made an attempt [Athenceum, April 
1867) to convert me to his way of looking at the dedication of 
the Sonnets. But, in spite of his having changed his front and 
substituted William Hathaway for William Herbert as the 
" Mr. W. H.," I am not to be so persuaded, not even though 
the learned professor offered to do me the honour of dedicating 
his book to me, after the fashion of Thorpe's inscription ; I am 
not to be seduced. M. Chasles now proposes to read the in- 
scription as a dedication of the Sonnets to the Earl of South- 
ampton by William Hathaway. The Sonnets he holds to be 
" too earnest, too dramatic, too personal, too painful, to allow 
one to suppose that they do not spring from the heart, or that 
they have been written by Shakspeare for another" Ergo, the 
greatest dramatist that ever lived could not have rendered the 
agony of Othello, the mighty madness of Lear, the machinations 
of Iago, the devilish daring in crime of Lady Macbeth, unless 
these things had all been personal to his own experience ! And 
we are asked to believe that Shakspeare wrote sonnets on his 
own sin, his infidelity to his wife ; that he parted with the Son- 
nets to make the sin public — (what ! " rhyme upon it, and vent 
it for a mockery " ?) — that he made the brother of his wronged 
wife the medium of publicly proclaiming her husband's sins, 
and that he thus bequeathed the burden of his own guilt and 
shame by dedicating these proofs of illicit love, which can only 
be personal to a man whose name was a Will," — to his beloved 



30 THE SECRET DRAMA 

friend Southampton, the man to whom he had publicly dedicated 
love without end, and privately promised eternal life, in sonnets 
which were consecrated to him. M. Chasles cannot see the im- 
possibility of Shakspeare being a party to the printing of the 
profane latter Sonnets, with those that were sacred to South- 
ampton, after he had publicly proclaimed that all he had to do 
was devoted and hallowed to his friend. 

Here let me remark, that Benson, in his address to the reader, 
printed with his edition of the Sonnets in 1640, labours to say 
something as to the nature of the Sonnets, although he does not 
get it out very clearly. He appears to be protesting against any 
impure personal application of the Sonnets to Shakspeare him- 
self. Evidently he has no clue whatever to their real nature, 
but he assures his readers that they are of the " same purity the 
author himself, when living, avouched." I do not suppose him 
to mean that the poet vouched for or vindicated the purity of 
his Sonnets, but that these are as pure as was the author's own 
life. And he adds : " I have been somewhat solicitous to bring 
this forth to the perfect view of all men, and in so doing glad to 
be serviceable for the continuance of glory to the deserving 
author." 

This was written twenty-four years after Shakspeare's death, 
and is acceptable and important testimony to personal character. 
Benson tells us that our poet, living, avouched such purity that 
his life testifies to the purity of his poems. Obviously the 
Sonnets had already raised suspicion as to their subject-matter, 
and in reply to these Benson speaks, defending the Sonnets and 
their author. 

Again, M. Chasles quotes numerous instances to show that 
Shakspeare used the word " beget " in the creative sense. But, 
as the Spartan said, " why say so much to the purpose of that 
which is nothing to the purpose ? " I never suggested that 
Shakspeare used the " begetter " of the inscription as " ob- 
tain er." I said it was Thorpe. 

The other day, whilst reading the " Faery Queen," I came 
upon a curious parallel to M. Chasles' difficulty in regard to 
the word " beget " (Book VI. canto 4) : — 

" Yet was it said, there should to him a son 
Be gotten, sot "begotten." 

This was a prophecy that Matilda should have a child, and the 
misinterpretation of the meaning led to a more serious disap- 
pointment than M. Chasles will feel — so I trust — even though his 
long-promised book may never be born. The lady naturally 
thought that she was to bear a child, whereas the oracle meant 
she was to obtain one and adopt it as her own. It was to be 
"got," not "begotten," just as the Sonnets were "got" for Thorpe 
by Mr. \V. H., not " begotten " by him in the poet's mind. 

M. Chasles asks, "What fiorire of rhetoric could induce the 



31 

pedantic Thomas Thorpe himself to use such an expression as / 
favour you favourably, or / love you lovingly? None but an idiot 
'could write thus." Now, courtesy would forbid me to agree with 
M. Chasles here, because such writing is his own, not Thomas 
Thorpe's ! However, students of Elizabethan literature, or even 
those who are only acquainted with Puttenham's " Arte of 
English Poesie," will smile at the fancy that Thorpe could not 
have written his " wisheth the well-wishing adventurer," in 
which he has so obviously imitated one of the then favourite 
figures of repetition. 

"My final reply to M. Chasles' appeal with regard to the in- 
scription is, that I can only look upon his reading of it as a 
frivolous and pedantic notion. I fully agree with Mr. Dyce's 
remarks on this head in his last edition of Shakspeare's works. 
He says : "lam unable to persuade myself that the inscription 
prefixed to the quarto of 1609 is anything else than a Dedication 
of the Sonnets to Mr. W. H. by Thomas Thorpe : the idea of M. 
Chasles that the inscription consists of two distinct sentences, 
appears to me a groundless fancy ; and his notion that, in the 
first of those sentences, ' Mr. W. H.' is the nominative to the verb 
' ivisheth' offends me as a still wilder dream." 

In opposing my theory that Shakspeare wrote sonnets vica- 
riously for the Earl of Southampton, M. Chasles asks : " Can 
we imagine that Southampton would borrow or purchase the 
pen of any poet to express," &c. There is no need to imagine. 
Shakspeare himself puts us in possession of the fact. He tells 
the Earl and us, in his Dedication to " Lucrece," that what he 
has written and what he has then to write, was for Southampton, 
to whom his pen is absolutely and utterly devoted ; he is " all 
his, in dedication." He makes a promise, too, which was to have 
a most remarkable fulfilment. In the Sonnets, it could only 
have fulfilment in one way. He could only devote sonnets to 
the Earl's service by writing about the Earl's affairs. In perfect 
accordance with this declaration in prose, the 38th Sonnet tells 
us the Earl is about to furnish his " own sweet argument " for 
the poet to versify, and has thus given " invention light" by in- 
venting the new method of dealing with the Earl's love affairs 
. and suggesting the dramatic treatment. This dedication of 
Shakspeare's pen, whether bought or borrowed, was not limited, 
however, to the writing of "sugared sonnets" for the lover, as 
we know by the adding of the deposition scene in " Richard the 
Second," to suit the plans of the Essex conspirators — at whose 
suggestion I should like to know, if not Southampton's. Of this 
fact I have yet further proof to adduce when I come to speak of 
a passage in Hamlet, M. Chasles is content to discuss the in- 
scription on the condition that the Sonnets themselves are " never. 
to he understood." I am not. After devoting years of labour to 
the whole subject, and, as I think, reaching the heart of the 



32 THE SECRET DRAMA 

maze, I do not care to stand with him on the outside, and argue 
about the inscription. No making out of the " Mr. W. H." could 
be satisfactory which left all the rest of the difficulties in outer 
darkness. My reading of the Sonnets and interpretation of the 
dedication go together. They throw light on each other; and 
this we have a right to demand from any grapple with the 
subject. There is no warrant whatever in the nature of the 
whole case — other than the initials of his name — for introducing 
" William Hathaway " either as "getter " or " begetter." Shak- 
speare could not have delegated to him the dedication of his own 
warm love for Southampton and the fulfilment of his promise 
made in 1594. And how should Southampton give up his secret- 
telling sybilline leaves to such a double nobody as William 
Hathaway ? William Herbert was a somebody; the only man of 
sufficient importance to take Shakspeare's place. And there is 
proof extant that Thorpe had dedicatory dealings with Herbert 
in the fact that the folio translation of "Augustine Civitatis 
Dei," published in 161i\is dedicated to "the Honourable Patron 
of Muses and Good Minds, Lord William, Earl of Pembroke." 
Here, as with the Sonnets, it is another man's work that Thorpe 
inscribes to the Earl, and in doing so uses the cypher "Th. Th." 
instead of his full name. 

Herbert was a friend of the Poet's, who felt and had sufficient 
interest to collect the Sonnets ; sufficient motive to have his title 
concealed in the inscription ; sufficient power to protect Thorpe 
in carrying out publicly the plan that he was privy to. Thorpe 
would not have dared to print another man's work without some 
warrant. So early as 1592 Shakspeare was of sufficient account 
to make Chettle apologise very courteously for words that had 
been uttered by another man for whom he had published a post- 
humous tract. Also we learn from Heywood that Shakspeare 
was much offended with Jaggard, who in 1599 pirated some 
pieces, including two of these Sonnets, and took liberties with 
the Poet's name — in fact, made it look as though the Poet had 
violated the secrecy of his private friends, and given the two 
sonnets to the press. Shakspeare's annoyance was so marked 
and manifested so strongly on that occasion that Jaggard took 
care to cancel his original title-page in a subsequent edition. 

If I had gone no deeper than the inscription, the mere surface 
of this subject, I might have suggested as " getter " of the Sonnets 
for Thorpe a more likely candidate for the ownership of the " W. 
H." than " William Hathaway," i.e. Sir " William Hervey," third 
husband of Southampton's mother. But the problem was not 
to be solved so. That Thorpe had no warrant from Shakspeare 
through Hathaway or any other way, is certain, or he would 
have said so. It was Herbert who warranted Thorpe, and this 
Thorpe lets us know, and so we hear no word of the Poet's anger 
with the publisher this time. Herbert alone will account for 



of shakspeare's sonnets. 33 

Shakspeare's after silence, he alone being of adequate importance. 
By the bye, is our Poet's after-silence so certain as has been as- 
sumed ? Did he give " Mr. W. H." no reminder that the trans- 
action was not fair and above-board — that the Sonnets were 
published — 

" Not honestly, my lord, but so covertly 
That no dishonesty shall appear in you 1 " 

His way of reply in such a case would be to put it into his 
next play. In all probability " Antony and Cleopatra " was 
composed about the time the Sonnets were printed." 1 It has 
been suggested that the characters of Enobarbus and Menas 
stand for Southampton and Thorpe. But for the nonce, or the 
nonsense, let them stand for Herbert and Thorpe while we read 
the following scene : — 

Eno. You have done well by water. 

Men. And you by land. 

Eno. I will praise any man that will praise me; tho' it cannot be denied 
what I have done by land. 

Men. Nor what I have done by water. 

Eno. Yes, something you can deny for your own safety : you have been a 
great thief by sea. 

Men. And you by land. 

Eno. There I deny my land-service. But give me your hand, Menas ; if 
our eyes had authority here, they might take two thieves kissing. 

As sense we shall make but little of that ! Nor will Plutarch 
help us to unriddle the nonsense of it. But it is so like the 
smiling way our Poet has of covertly alluding to real facts, as I 
have previously shown. It looks exactly as though Shakspeare 
held Herbert and Thorpe to be thieves both ; Herbert by land in 
pirating, and Thorpe by sea in publishing the Sonnets. That 
" something you can deny for your own safety," sounds like a 
hit at Thorpe's dedication, and his wriggling politeness in trying 
to cast the responsibility on " AY. H." and whatsoever " land- 
service " Herbert might deny, according to Shakspeare, the 
meeting-point was two thieves kissing. A Judas-like reminder 
that he had been betrayed by both ! 

I might give other instances in proof that Shakspeare's humour 
frequently finds play in this fashion. For example, this passage 
occurs in " As you Like it " : — 

Touchstone. How old are you, friend ? 

Will. Five-and- twenty, Sir. 

Touch. A ripe age : is thy name William ? 

Will. William, sir. 

Touch. A fair name. Now you are not ipge, for I am he. 

Will. Which he, sir ? 

And to me it appears to glance slyly at Herbert and the 

1 Shakspeare's play was not published, so far as we know, previous to its 
appearance in the folio of 1623, but a play with this title was entered at Stationers' 
Hall, May 20, 1608, in all likelihood the same. Of course the date of entry may 
be no criterion as to the time when the play was finished. 

D 



34 THE SECRET DRAMA 

latter Sonnet, in which occurs the joke at the expense of Age 
in love : — 

" But Age in love loves not to have years told." 

Also it may foreshadow the fact that two " Wills " are con- 
cerned in the latter Sonnets, and it might possibly become a diffi- 
culty some day as to which of the two is ipse ! If so, it was a 
shrewd trick of Mr. W. H. — the younger " Will," — to play off on 
his namesake the elder " Will " if he printed the Sonnets con- 
taining puns on the name of " Will " unknown to Shakspeare. 
This would be paying off his joke practically. 

Then comes the question, " Art Rich I " Put to a poor country 
lout, it has not much meaning ; poked at Herbert, the joke is 
enriched. I conjecture that this play was written in 1599, 
the year assigned by me to the Herbert series of Sonnets, and 
several likenesses crop up, more particularly where Silvius, the 
disdained lover of Phoebe, brings a love-letter from her to Eosa- 
lind, and Eosalind charges Silvius with writing the letter. There 
is not the least reason for supposing that Silvius does not speak 
the simple truth when he says he has " never heard it yet." But 
Eosalind, in spite of his protestations, still assumes that he devised 
and wrote it, and says, " What, to make thee an instrument and 
play false strains upon thee I " I see no motive in this, unless, as I 
believe, it points to something not in sight, and is a bit of by-play, 
glancing at the fact that Shakspeare wrote Sonnets on behalf of 
Herbert, and used such " Ethiope words y blacker in their effect 
than in their countenance" as Eosalind says. It is curious, too, 
to notice in connection with the " black wires " of Sonnet 130, 
p. 369, that Phcebe complains of Eosalind in disguise. : — 

" He said mine eyes were black, and jit hair black ! 
And now I do remember scorned at me. 
I marvel why I answered not again ! " 

As if, like Lady Eich's, her hair was xot black, but only called 
so to spite her ! The more one thinks of this 

" Matter and inrpertinency mixed," 

in our Poet's by-play, the more probable it becomes that he 
does allude to the surreptitious publication of the Sonnets in the 
passage quoted from " Antony and Cleopatra." 

If my account of the way in which the Sonnets were given to 
the press be correct, there ought surely to be some sort of con- 
temporary evidence in corroboration of the fact. Easy-going 
as Shakspeare may have appeared, he could hardly help being 
annoyed, I think, at the liberties taken with his poetry and his 
name, even though this were done by an Earl who " prosecuted " 
him with so much favour. It must have happened that he spoke 
out on the subject pretty freely to some poet-friend or other. Ben 
Jonson, one may infer, would hear something of it. To be sure, 
Shakspeare, in 1609, may have been living at Stratford, almost 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 35 

withdrawn from the old London haunts, thus leaving the ground 
clear for Herbert and Thorpe to print. Still, the transaction 
must have been talked of. About that time, or a little earlier, 
George Wither had come to London to try and push his fortunes 
at Court. Xot succeeding in a hurry, he resolved to turn satirist. 
He was very young, and just in his eager first love of literature, 
with ears hungry for any poetic gossip going, and may have got 
at the facts as nearly as an outsider could; especially as he 
printed two dedicatory sonnets, one to the Earl of Southampton, 
the other to the Earl of Pembroke. Anyway, this volume of 
satirical poems is satirically inscribed to himself thus : " 67. W. 
wisheth himself all happiness;" which is obviously a parody of 
Thorpe's fantastic inscription. But is there no more intended 
than a parody of form ? Does not the satire lurk in the " wisheth 
himself all happiness ? " Now, Thorpe did not wish himself all 
happiness, but " Air. W. H." May not Wither have had an 
inkling that the Sonnets were given to the world by Herbert, 
who in accepting Thorpe's dedication was as good as wishing 
himself all happiness and that " eternity promised by our ever- 
living Poet," though not promised to him ? Herbert knew that he 
was not the man to whom Shakspeare had promised immortality, 
but had coyly permitted Thorpe's soft impeachment, Wither 
may have known it too. Lie may also hold the Earl responsible 
for the dedication to himself, and 'tis there his arrow sticks. 
Ben Jonson likewise ostensibly alludes to Thorpe's inscription 
and at the same time points out William Herbert as the object of 
it. He dedicates his Epigrams to the Earl of Pembroke, and 
says : "While you cannot change your merit, I dare not change 
your title : — under which name I here offer to your lordship the 
ripest of my studies, my Epigrams; w 7 hich, though they carry 
danger in the sound, do not therefore seek your shelter ; for 
when I made them I had nothing in my conscience, to expressing 
of which I DID XEED A CYPHER." 

This tells us plainly enough that the Earl's title had been 
changed in some previous dedication in which a writer had 
taken the disguise of using a cypher instead of his full name. 
Here is an answer once for all to those who have urged against 
my reading, that the " Mr. W. H. " could not be William Herbert, 
because he was the Earl of Pembroke, and because it was not the 
custom of the time to address Earls as " Masters ! " as if this 
were a case to be settled by merely referring to a custom of the 
time ! Well, then, if my interpretation of Wither's dedication to 
himself be right, this of Ben Jonson's looks like a reply to it, as 
though it were an endeavour to saddle Thorpe with the responsi- 
bility of publishing Shakspeare's Sonnets and dedicating them 
to the Earl. Shakspeare was dead and out of the question here. 
It was Thorpe who had changed the Earl's title, and used a 
cypher both for his own name and Pembroke's. And it is 

d 2 



6b THE SECRET DEAMA 

implied that this was done because he had something on his 
conscience : all was not straightforward in the affair, and so he 
songht the Earl's shelter under a cypher covertly. But I do not 
believe Jonson to be so innocent as he looks. I hold him to be 
using " gag," as actors term it. I am afraid he knew better — 
even in the act of dealing Thorpe this backhander on the mouth 
— knew he was offering up a scapegoat. Be the inference as it 
may, the fact of Jonson's reference remains, and counts in 
favour of my theory. Jonson has a gird at Wither in " Time 
Vindicated ? " one of his many "masques" presented at Court; 
as Chronomastix, the gentleman-like satirist who " cared for 
nobody." If I mistake not, Wither wrote a song with some 
such refrain as " I care for nobody." He identifies Chrono- 
mastix as one with himself in the 7th Canto of " Britain's 
Eemembrancer " : — 

" The valiant poet they me, in scorn, do call, 
The Chronomastrix." 

I suspect Jonson also has a gird at John Davies in this masque. 
Davies wrote " The Scourge of Folly," and it was published with 
a frontispiece representing Folly on the back of Time, naked to 
the lash, which Davies wields. Jonson says : — 

" There is a schoolmaster 
Is turning all his ( Wither 's) works, too, into Latin, 
To pure satyric Latin ; makes his boys 
To learn him ; calls him the Time's Juvenal ; 
Hangs all his school with his sharp sentences ; 
And o'er the execution place hath painted 
Time whipt, for terror to the infantry." 

Both Wither and Davies fought on the Puritan side as against 
the Players. . The earliest form in which this stripping and 
whipping appeared was a puritanical pamphlet published in 
1569, entitled "The Children of the Chapel Stript and Whipt." 
On their side, the Players were not backward in showing up 
and making sport of their opponents on the stage. I have pre- 
viously pointed out Shakspeare's repayment to John Davies of 
something he owed him (p. 523.) I have now to suggest a still 
more startling identification. You will remember that John 
Davies was a schoolmaster. He published a book, called " The 
Writing Schoolmaster." He was a wonderful caligraphist " thrice 
famoused for rarity," says Nicolas Deeble. He challenged all 
England to contest the palm for penmanship, and one of his 
admirers challenges the whole world on his behalf. He appears 
to have taught one-half the nobility to write, and on the strength 
of that, solicited the other half to read his writings. He was 
continually gnarring at the heel of Shakspeare, or absurdly 
trying to pat him on the back. In his <: Paper's Complaint," 
which is full of tortured conceits, chiefly personal to himself, he 
says of Shakspeare : — ■ 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 37 

" Another (ah, Lord help me!) vilifies 
With art of love, and how to subtilize, 
Making lewd Venus, with eternal lines, 
To tie Adonis to her love's designs. 
Fine wit is shed therein, but finer 'twere 
If not attired in such baudy gear." 

This is immediately followed by allusions to the paper war 
between Kash and Harvey, and to the writings of Greene. And 
he may possibly allude to Shakspeare and the latter Sonnets 
when he writes — 

" And oh, that ever any should record, 
And chronicle the sedges of a lord ! " 

A pun is here intended, for he says, not sieges of castles and 
towns, but " sedges " of a vile kind. But his great complaint is 
some injury received from a playwright who has publicly put 
him to confusion and shame, and he regrets that 

" Poets, if they last, can hurt with ease 
(Incurably) their foes which them displease." 

Again : he says, " a great torment in the life to come is due to 
those that can and will take such immortal revenge for any 
mortal injury." He tells us that he penned his "Scourge of 
Folly " because he had been " disgraced with fell disasters." He 
does not here allude to Ben Jonson's " Time Vindicated," for 
that is dated 1623, the "Scourge of Tolly" appearing in 1611. 
It has been absurdly suggested that Davies is complaining of 
Shakspeare's having burlesqued him in his Sonnets, as the rival 
poet, whom I show to be Marlowe. But it is a chronicle, i.e. a 
play, in which his injuries were made historical. Hamlet calls 
the Players the " Chronicles " of the time. " This sport well 
carried shall be chronicled," — made a play of — says Helena to 
Hermia. Besides, this chronicler is one w T ho notices the least 
thing and puts it into his plays ; such as the mending of the 
" \Veathercock of Poules," or the publishing of the new map of 
the Indies, and he " confounds grave matters of State " with 
" plays of puppets," and he has made a puppet of poor John ! 
Davies cries : — 

"Alas! 
That e'er this dotard made me such an ass, 
and that in such a thing 
We call a chronicle, so on me bring 
A world of shame. A shame upon them all 
That make mine injuries historical, 
To wear out time ; that ever, without end, 
My shame may last, without some one it mend. 
And if a senseless creature, as I am, 
And so am made by those whom thus I blame, 
My judgment give, from those that know it well, 
His notes for art and judgment doth excel. 
Well fare thee, man of art, and world of wit, 
Thai hy $upremest mercy livcst yet!" 



38 THE SECRET DRAMA 

This sounds exactly like the maundering of one of Shak- 
speare's Dogberry kind of characters, but there's matter in % as 
we shall see. 

Davies' position was an uneasy one; he tries to balance him- 
self first on one leg, then on the other. He wants to say some- 
thing cutting about Shakspeare all the while, and so the Players 
are " Nature's zanies ; Fortune's spite ; " and " railers " against 
the State. On the other hand, Shakspeare has been graced by 
Eoyalty, and is an intimate friend of the young Earl of Pembroke, 
for whose amusement probably Davies has been made such game 
of, and who was pestered continually by Davies' inflated fatuous 
effusions. And so, in spite of his attacks, he protests his love 
for the poets : — - 

" Yea, those I love, that in too earnest game 
(A little spleen), did me no little shanie." 

My explanation of this is, that John Davies had been pilloried, 
staged, propertied, and made the most amazing ass of in the 
character of Malvolio, in the play of "Twelfth Night": — "For 
Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him : if I do not gull him 
into ana3^word and make him a common recreation, do not think 
I have wit enough to lie straight in my bed." Shakspeare did 
not bite his lip there for nothing ! We are "railers" and "zanies," 
are we ? "I protest," says Malvolio, " I take these wise men 
that crow so at these set kind of fools, no better than the fools' 
zanies ! " No envious allusion, let us hope, on account of the 
poet's noble patrons who " spent their time in seeing plays." To 
be sure, Davies' lines happen to be charged with that feeling. 
And what a blithe-spirited, sweet-blooded reply this draws from 
the happy, cordial heart of the man himself: — " 0,you are sick of 
self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite. To be 
generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things 
for birdbolts that you deem cannon bullets. There is no slander 
in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail ; nor no railing in 
a known discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove." I will 
only remark here that the fool in the play cannot be the " known 
discreet man," but we may divine who was. Davies was a 
Puritan ; but " dost thou think because thou art virtuous there 
shall be no more cakes and ale ?" " Marry, sir, sometimes he is 
a kind of Puritan." " The devil a Puritan that he is, or anything 
constantly but a time-pleaser ; an affectioned ass, that cons state 
without book, and utters it by great swarths : the best persuaded 
of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is 
his ground of faith that all that look on him love." Few will 
know how true that is of Davies, for few will ever read his 
works ; but a sufficient peep at him may be got as he stands 
before the mirror of himself in his dedications — 

" Practising behaviour to his own shadow." 



OF SHAKSREARE'S SONNETS. 39 

Then Davies complains that the chronicler had spotted him with 
a "medley of motley livery." Nothing could more surely 
characterise the dress in which the fool got his dressing — yellow 
stockinged, and cross -gartered most villanoiisly. Next, Davies 
was the great master of writing on parchment, i.e. sheepskin ; the 
"niggardly, rascally sheepbiter ;" the great professor of calli- 
graphy— 

" I think we do know the siveet Eoman hand." 

We saw how, with the air of a connoisseur, he studied the shape 
of my lady's letters. " These be her very C's, her U's, and her 
T's ; and thus makes she her great P's." " Her C's, her U's, and 
her T's ; why that V asks Sir Andrew. " Ah, mocker, that's the 
dog's " profession. Then, he " looks like a pedant that keeps a 
school % the church" No doubt of it : he was a schoolmaster ; 
and he puts himself into the trick of singularity, as God knows 
John Davies did. It is with him as the " very true sonnet is : 
please one, please all," — which, if I rightly recollect, is an 
allusion to a refrain of one of Davies'. Thus was Davies made 
the "most notorious geek and gull that e'er invention played 
on : " thus the 

" Lucrece knife 
With bloodless stroke " 

was driven home ; " the impressure her Lucrece, with which 
she uses to seal;" and if he was not phlebotomised by the stroke, 
he was Bottom-ised all over; his ass-hood made permanent 
for ever. 

Why should Shakspeare do this ? He will tell us : — 

" Myself and Toby 
Set this device against Malvolio here, 
Upon some stubborn and lincourteous paits 
We had conceived against him. 
How with a sjjortful malice it was followed, 
May rather pluck on laughter than revenge ; 
If that the injuries be justly Aveighed 
That have on both sides past." 

But how do the dates tally ? I know of no book published by 
Davies with a elate previous to the year 1602 — "Wit's Pil- 
grimage " having no date — in which year, according to Manning- 
ham's Diary," " Twelfth Night " was performed. But, as Mr. 
Halliwell has said, Davies' poems may, in either case, have been 
written years before publication ; some of his Epigrams appeared 
with Marlowe's translation of Ovid's Elegies in 1596-7; and we 
know that Davies bewails the difficulty he had in getting his 
poems printed. The " Scourge of Folly " consists of various pieces, 
written during many years. Davies was educated at Oxford, 
and probably became a tutor in the Pembroke family. He wrote 
a poem on the death of Herbert's father, and says, "My friend 
did die, and so would God might I." This brings him very 
near to Herbert in the only accountable way, and explains the 



40 THE SECRET DRAMA 

familiarity of Davies' early dedications. As tutor, with Puritan 
pretensions, he would warn the young Earl against Shakspeare 
and the Players, for he was unboundedly liberal with his advice. 
In this way many things might come to Shakspeare's eyes and 
ears long before they were made public, for we know with what 
" favour " Herbert " prosecuted" our poet. The young lord could 
not help making fun of his own absurd, "peculiar John," as 
Davies signed himself when " double-bound to W.," and that in 
concert with Shakspeare, and then be generous enough to help 
him to get his pitiable endeavours to appear witty and wise 
shown up in print as fun-provoking follies. Shakspeare knew 
better than we w T hat Davies may have written and said previous 
to 1602, but I have quoted enough, I think, for Davies to stand 
self-identified as Malvolio. For one thing, the last I have to 
take note of, among Davies' "Epigrams," JSTo. 50 is "Drusus his 
Deer-stealing," the contents of which one cannot apply to 
Shakspeare, but there is more likelihood in the title. That 
Shakspeare was a deer-stealer we know ; that he "was described 
as " Drusus " by Marston, I have endeavoured to demonstrate 
(p. 520). But why Drusus should have been a nickname of Shak- 
speare's I do not pretend to understand. It looks, however, as 
though it were so, and if Marston's Drusus be meant for Shak- 
speare, then Davies is the same further identified by the deer- 
stealing. 

An eminent critic, writing to me on the subject of Sonnet 
107, says : " I have always thought that sonnet one of those 
from which those who, like yourself, attach high value to iden- 
tifying the underlying facts, should be able to deduce solid 
inferences, and your explanation has a very probable air. On 
the other hand, the line about Peace — 

i And Peace proclaims olives of endless age/ 

appears to me rather too definite for the accession of James I., 
and to point to some single political event. A friend of mine 
kindly consulted ihe Astronomer Eoyal as to whether any con- 
spicuous lunar eclipse had occurred about the time " (that is, of 
Elizabeth's death). This was, so far as the present writer can 
gather, entirely without success. Besides, the ' eclipse' in 
Shakspeare's Sonnet is 'mortal,' not lunar: — 

' The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured.' 

This luminary shone in the human or mortal sphere — was sub- 
ject to mortality. Just in the same vein, he calls the eyes of 
' Lucrece,' ' mortal stars ; Valeria, in ; Coriolanus,' is called the 
' moon of Eome ;' and Cleopatra is spoken of by Antony as our 
' terrene moon ' — " Our terrene moon is now eclipsed.' The 
Queen v T as the earthly or mortal moon. In ' Love's Labour's 
Lost ' the King says of the Princess, who is possibly meant for 
Queen Elizabeth, • My love, her mistress, is a gracious moon ;' 



of shakspeare's sonnets. 41 

she — that is Rosalind, whom I have shown to be Stella, Lady 
Rich — ' an attending star/ " In reply to this letter I may say 
that King James came to the English throne as the personifica- 
tion of Peace — peace in himself and his policy ; peace " white- 
robed or white-liver'd ;" peace at home and abroad ; peace any- 
how so that he might not be scared with the shadow of his ante- 
natal terror, a sword. I will make a very curious parallel to 
that 107th Sonnet (p. 311) from a bit of its contemporary prose. 
This is the first paragraph of the dedicatory epistle to King 
James, still to be seen at the beginning of our English Bibles : — 

" For whereas it was the expectation of many, who wished not well to our 
Sion, that upon the setting of that bright occidental star, Queen Elizabeth, 
of most happy memory, some thick and palpable clouds of darkness would so 
have overshadowed this land, that men should have been in doubt which way 
they were to walk, and that it should hardly be known who was to direct the 
unsettled State ; the appearance of your Majesty, as of the sun in its strength, 
instantly dispelled those supposed and surmised mists, and gave unto all that 
were well affected exceeding cause of comfort ; especially when we beheld the 
Government established in your Highness and your hopeful seed by an un- 
doubted Title, and this also accompanied with peace and tranquillity at home 
and abroad." 

"We look out of the same window on precisely the same prospect 
in both Sonnet and Dedication. Let me point a few of the 
parallels. 

Ded. " It teas the expectation of many." 

Sonnet. " Mine own fears " and " the prophetic soul of the wide vmrld 
dreaming on things to come." 

Ded. Upon the setting of that bright Occidental Star.'''' 

Sonnet. " The mortal Moon hath her eclipse endured." 

Ded. " The appearance of your Majesty, as of the sun in his strength." 

Sonnet. " Now with the drops of this most balmy time (i.e. the deivs of 
this new April claiuri). 

Ded. " That men should have been in doubt — that it should be hardly known." 

Sonnet. " Incertainties now crown themselves assured." 

Ded. "Accompanied with -peace and tranquillity at home and abroad." 

Sonnet. " And Peace proclaims olives of endless age." 

It is impossible to doubt that the same spirit pervades the two; 
that the same death is recorded ; the same fears are alluded to ; 
the same exultation is expressed; the same peace identified. 
The Sonnet tells us in all plainness that our poet had 
been filled with a ''prophesying fear" for the fate of his friend, 
whose life was supposed to be forfeited to a " confined doom," or, 
as we say, " his days were numbered ; " that the instinct of the 
world in general had foreboded the same, but that the Queen is 
now dead and all uncertainties are over ; those who augured the 
worst can afford to laugh at their own predictions. The new 
king smiles on our poet's friend, and calls him forth from a 
prison to a palace to richly receive the " drops," sheddings of his 
bounty ; and with this new reign and release there opens a new 
dawn of gladness and promised peace for the nation : — 
" Peace proclaims olives of endless age." 



42 THE SECSET DRAMA 

" I confess myself astonished," says a distinguished historian. 
in a commentary on my view of our poet's "private friends/ 
"that you should assume that Shakspeare's friendships must 
necessarily have lain among the aristocracy. Why should they, 
any more than Carlyle's or Tennyson's, or, for the matter of that, 
yours or mine ? If you knew as much of the history of the 
million other families which existed at that time in England as 
you happen to know of those you mention (i.e. Southampton, 
Herbert, Essex, Lady Eich, and Mistress Vernon), you would find 
perhaps at least a thousand with which the known facts and the 
structure of the Sonnets could be harmonized. Shakspeare was 
not a courtier like Raleigh, e.g. far more likely to have chosen 
his intimate associates in his own rank." In answer to this I 
need say nothing of the " million families " or the thousand 
candidates to any one who knows how narrow was the beau 
monde of Shakspeare's time — limited in point of fact to the 
Court circle — and I am greatly surprised at such a statement 
made by our Elizabethan chronicler. The reference to my own 
case is infelicitous, because, if my name and poetry should ever 
be coupled with my " private friends," it happens that these 
will be members of the aristocracy, and, as in Shakspeare's 
case, on account of the poems which were written by me for 
them. The parallel is perfect ; not because my " private friends " 
are limited to the peerage — for the truth is, that one of them is 
but a commoner who does not make more than half a million 
a year. 

Nothing could be further from my thoughts than to assume 
that our poet's sole personal friends were noblemen. Doubtless 
he had many private friends in his own social rank ; evidently, 
he considered his "fellows, Heminge, Burbage, and Condell" as 
private friends when he remembered them in his " Will" In 
dealing with the words of Meres we have nothing whatever to do 
with Shakspeare's " private friends " or choice of companions 
apart from his poems. Meres speaks of those "private friends " 
amongst whom were Shakspeare's Sonnets up to 1598. We 
know that the Earls Southampton and Pembroke were friends of 
our poet. The Players tell us that Pembroke pursued our poet 
living with great favour ; their language implies more than mere 
patronage. That Southampton was also his personal friend is 
told us by Shakspeare himself: — 

" Myself have heard him say that this his love was an eternal plant." 

He dedicated " love without end "to the Earl in 1594, and tells him 
that what he has written was for him, and what he has yet to 
write is for him, lie being part and parcel in ail that Shakspeare 
has devoted to him. No public writer has ventured to doubt 
that I have identified Southampton " in contempt of question." 
Shakspeare's poetical relationship to him will for ever be the 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 43 

umbilical cord of the connection, which is not to be severed in 
favour of any other possible, but undiscovered, relationship. It 
is a known fact, never to be set aside by what we do not know. 
On this head let me quote my critic of the Athenceum, April 
28, 1866 :— 

" If Southampton is not the male Mend addressed by Shakspeare in the 
earlier portion of these poems, evidence counts for nothing. Why, he is in- 
dicated in general and in particular — as regards his class and his person — by 
the most certain marks. The friend addressed by the poet is young (S. 1), of 
gracious presence (10), noble of birth (37), rich in money and land (48), 
a town gallant (95), a man rain and exacting (103). These general charac- 
teristics, though vague and impersonal, exclude a good many pretenders to 
the office of Shakspeare's friend. They exclude the whole class of actors, 
playwrights, and managers ; the whole tribe of Shakspeare's kinsmen and 
townsmen ; all the imaginary Hugheses, Hathaways, and Hartes. They con- 
fine our field of choice to men of the rank and character of Essex, Rutland, 
Pembroke, and Southampton ; men about whom we have a good deal of in- 
formation from other sources, whose fortunes we can follow, and whose cha- 
racters we can read, by many distinct and independent lines. Having found 
that our hero is young, rich, noble, profligate, we may go a little further, for 
particular marks, and shall assuredly find them. Indeed, the poet's friend is 
described in full ; discriminated from all his fellows by a number of special 
marks, some of which appear to have escaped Mr. Massey's critical eye. 

" All these criteria (which admit of being tested in a few minutes) mark 
the man Southampton with unerring truth. Passing in review the noblemen 
who were then young, rich, wealthy, and profligate, we find one, and only one, 
to whom the criteria will apply. Essex was not single. Rutland had no . 
previous connection with the poet, and. had never publicly honoured him. 
Pembroke was a mere boy, to whom Shakspeare had not dedicated a book. 
In 1595, Pembroke, then William Herbert, was only fifteen years old, and his 
mother was not a widow. Every point in these criteria meet in Southampton." 

After which certainty and anchorage in fact it is shere folly 
to cut ourselves adrift again with the vague supposition that 
Meres may have meant Shakspeare's intimates amongst play- 
wrights and players. Of course Southampton was a public man 
of his time, and a public patron of our poet ; but the public 
men of any time may have their private friends. Bolingbroke 
in " King Richard II." speaks of the King as having " landed 
with some few private friends," all of whom would be public 
men of the day. If Meres had been speaking of Shakspeare 
at the theatre, he might have alluded to Southampton as a 
patron : that would be the only opposition to " private friend." 
But the " private " in this case is not used in opposition to 
"public" in the modern sense, nor is Meres speaking of the 
theatre. He is recognising the other, the private side of South- 
ampton's patronage, which means personal friendship. We 
know from Shakspeare himself that the Sonnets were private in 
their nature, and intended to be kept private, so far as he knew 
when he wrote them. Up to a late period they are devoted so 
solely and so sacredly to Southampton, that they could not have 
been given away by Shakspeare to his stage companions ; he 



44 THE SECRET DRAMA 

could not have destroyed their privacy. In Sonnet 21 he does 
not purpose to "sell" them, as Drayton in 1593 had done with 
his. In Sonnet 102 he writes — 

" That love is merchandised whose rich esteeming 
The owner's tongue doth publish everywhere.'" 

Southampton and his love are still the whole of our poet's 
argument in Sonnet 76. In Sonnet 38, they are to be kept in 
the Earl's sight ; they are also too precious in their subject for 
" every vulgar paper to rehearse/' therefore too private for 
theatrical intimates to have copies of. In Sonnet 17 he looks 
forward to his MS. becoming "yellow with age." And when 
Shakspeare dies, the Sonnets are to remain with the Earl as the 
memorial of our poet's love. It is the private nature of the 
Sou nets in contradistinction to Shakspeare's writings for the 
theatre, coupled with the choice quality of the friendship, that of 
necessity determined the private nature of Meres' characteriza- 
tion. We knew before that Shakspeare was too diligent a man 
and too indifferent to fame to be writing fugitive sonnets to hand 
about in MS. amongst his common acquaintances. We know 
now, by this identification of Southampton as the person ad- 
dressed, that Meres meant the Earl and his private friends when 
he alluded to Shakspeare's "private friends." So early as 1592 
Chettle informs us that when our poet had been attacked and 
abused by the Green and Nash clique — the sort of people that 
some persons would identify as the " private friends " of our 
poet meant by Meres, — " divers of worth," that is persons of great 
importance, had come forward to testify to Shakspeare's integrity; 
in fact, such persons then befriended him ; ergo, were his " private 
friends." By his " divers of worth," Chettle did not mean 
players and playwrights, but the exact opposite of such ; and six 
years later Meres points to these " divers of worth " as Shak- 
speare's " private friends." Shakspeare has identified for us the 
public patron as the private friend, and that must absolutely and 
for ever determine the meaning of Meres in relation to the Sonnets. 

And now, bear with me a little longer, while I examine a 
passage in " Hamlet," to see what further light it may shed on 
the subject of our poet's feeling towards Queen Elizabeth, and the 
nature of his relationship to those " private friends " of his, pre- 
viously, and I trust sufficiently, identified. 

You are aware that one of the real cruxes and greatest 
perplexities of Shakspearean editors occurs in a passage in 
" Hamlet " which is so bungled or broken that it has never been 
mended with any satisfaction. The lines are spoken by Horatio, 
in the opening scene, after he has caught his first glimpse of the 
Ghost: — 

" In the most high and palmy state of Borne, 
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, 



OF shakspeare's sonnets. 45 

The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets. 

As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, 
Disasters in the sun ; and the moist star 
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands 
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse. 
And even the like precurse of fierce events, 
As harbingers preceding still the fates 
And prologue to the omen coming on, 
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated 
Unto our climatures and countrymen " — 

The asterisks stand for a missing link in these lines. Some 
of the Commentators have tried to solder them together by alter- 
ing a word or two, but they have never been set right. Eowe 
endeavoured to connect the fifth and sixth lines by reading — 

" Stars shone with trains of fire, dews of blood fell, 
Disasters veiled the sun." 

Malone proposed to change ■" as stars " to Astres, remarking 
that " the disagreeable recurrence of the word star in the second 
line induces me to believe that ' as stars ' in that which precedes 
is a corruption. Perhaps Shakspeare wrote — 

1 A stres with trains of fire and dews of blood, 
Disastrous veiled the sun.' " 

Another critic proposed (in Notes and Queries) to read 

" Asters with trains of fire and dews of blood, 
Disasters in the sun" — 

meaning by disasters, spots or blotches. Mr. Staunton conceives 
the cardinal error lies in " disasters," which conceals some verb 
importing the obscuration of the sun ; for example— 

" Asters with trains of fire and dews of blood 
Distempered the sun ; " 

or discoloured the sun :" So far as I can learn, no one has gone 
any deeper into the subject matter of this passage, or questioned 
the fact of eclipses of the sun and moon heralding and presaging 
the death of Julius Caesar. As the lines stand, we are compelled 
to read that, amongst other signs and portents of Caesar's assassi- 
nation, there were " disasters in the sun" and almost a complete 
eclipse of the moon. Yet no such facts are known or registered 
in history. There WAS an eclipse of the sun the year after Caesar's 
death, which is spoken of by Aurelius Victor, Dion, Josephus, 
and Virgil in his 4th Georgic (vide " L' Art de Verifier les Dates," 
vol. i. p. 264). This is known and recorded, just as we have evi- 
dence of the general eclipse at the death of Jesus Christ, but it 
did not presage and could not be the precursor of Caesar's fall. 

If we turn to Plutarch, we shall find there were "strong signs 
and presages of the death of Caesar ;" and the old biographer 
suggests that fate is not always so secret as it is inevitable. He 
alludes to the lights in the heavens, the unaccountable noises 



46 THE SECRET DRAMA 

heard in various parts of the city, the appearance of solitary 
birds in the Forum, and says these trivialities may hardly de- 
serve our notice in presence of so great an event; but more 
attention should be paid to Strabo, who tells us that fiery figures 
were seen fighting in the air ; a flame of fire issued visibly from 
the hand of a soldier who did not take any hurt from it ; one of 
the victims offered in sacrifice by Caesar was discovered to be 
without a heart ; a soothsayer threatened Caesar with a great 
danger on the ides of March ; the doors and windows of his 
bedroom fly open at night ; his wife Calpurnia dreams of his 
murder, and the fall of the pinnacle on their house. He mentions 
the sun in a general way : says the " sun was darkened — the 
which all that year rose very pale and shined not out." In 
Golding's translation of the loth Book of Ovid's Metamorphoses 
there is an account of the prodigies, which speaks of " Phoebus 
looking dim," but there is no eclipse, nor is there any allusion 
to the' moon. Neither is there in Shakspeare's drama of Julius 
Caesar. The poet, as usual with him, has adopted all the inci- 
dents to be found in Plutarch. He has repeated Calpurnia's 
dream ; the fiery figures encountering in the air, the lights seen 
in the heavens, the strange noises heard, the lonesome birds in 
the public Forum, the flame that was seen to issue from the 
soldier's hand unfelt, the lion in the Capitol, the victim offered 
by Caesar and found to have no heart. He describes the graves 
yawning, and the ghosts shrieking in the Eoman streets-; 
blood drizzling over the Capitol, and various other things "por- 
tentous" to the "climate that they point upon." But, I repeat, 
there is no hint of any eclipse of sun or moon in Shakspeare's 
" Julius Caesar." Thus we find no eclipse marked in history ; 
no eclipse noted by Plutarch ; no eclipse alluded to by Shak- 
speare when directly treating the subject of Caesar's fall. How, 
then, should an eclipse, not to say two, occur in " Hamlet," and 
this in the merest passing allusion to the death of Caesar ? Further 
study of the passage has led me to the conclusion that, from 
some cause or other, the printers have got the lines wrong, 
through displacing five of them, and that we should read the 
passage as follows : — 

" In the most high and palmy state of Eome, 
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell, 
The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead 
Did squeak and gibber in the Eoman streets. 
And even the lilce precurse of fierce events 
(As harbingers preceding still the fates, 
And prologue to the omen coming on) 
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated 
Unto our climaturcs and countrymen, 
As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood ; 
Disasters in the sun : and the moist star 
Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands 
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse." 



OF SIIAKSPEAKE'S SONNETS. 47 

It is noteworthy that where the original punctuation has been re- 
tained — and this is a warning to those who will be tampering with 
the text — it goes to corroborate the present reading, for it runs on 
after " countrymen," and comes to the full stop after "eclipse." 

It must be admitted that we recover the perfect sense of the 
passage by this version, and I have to submit to Shakspeare 
students and editors that our poet would not have introduced 
" disasters in the sun " and an almost " toted eclipse of the moon " 
where they never occurred ; consequently, these can have no more 
to do with Caesar in the play of " Hamlet " than they are con- 
nected with him in history. Therefore, as they are wrong in fact, 
the reading of the passage hitherto accepted must be wrong ; and 
as this simple transposition of the lines sets the reading right, 
with no change of words, I trust that it may be found to cor- 
rect the printer's error. 

We have in the present reading of the lines, then, got away 
from Eome with our eclipses : they did not occur there. Nor 
do they occur in the Play prior to the appearance of the 
Ghost. Nor had they occurred in Denmark. These portents of 
sun and moon had not been visible to Horatio and his fellow- 
seers. Their only portent was the apparition of Hamlet's father, 
this "portentous figure " that appeared to the watchers by night. 
The meteors, the dews of blood, the disasters in the sun, and the 
complete eclipse of the moon, are wanting to Denmark. Where 
then did these eclipses take place ? 

Having spent a good deal of time and thought in trying to 
track our poet's footprints and decipher his shorthand allusive- 
ness, which must have been vastly enjoyed by the initiated, but 
which so often and so sorely poses us, I am all the more sus- 
picious that there is deeper meaning in this passage than meets 
the eye on the surface, or than could be fathomed until we had the 
shifted lines restored to their proper place. Not that my inter- 
pretation has to depend altogether on the restoration. However 
read, there are the " disasters in the sun " and the eclipse of 
the moon in the lines, and there is the fact that these did not 
happen in Eome and do not occur in Denmark ! But I am in 
hopes that this fracture of the lines may prove an opening, a 
vein of richness in the strata of the subject-matter, especially as 
this very passage was not printed in the quarto of 1603, audit 
was again omitted in the folio edition of 1623. 

I have to suggest, and if possible demonstrate, that in this 
■ passage from " Hamlet " our poet was going " round to work," 
as I have traced him at it a score of times in his Sonnets and 
Plays. I can have no manner of doubt that Shakspeare was re- 
ferring in those lines to the two eclipses which were visible in 
England in the year 1598. Though but little noted, the tradition 
is that a total eclipse of the sun took place in 1598, and the day 
was so dark as to be called " black Saturday." But that was not 



48 THE SECKET DRAMA 

enough ; an eclipse of the moon was wanted : and I am deeply 
indebted to the Astronomer Eoyal for his courtesy and kindness. 
I told him I wanted two eclipses in the year 1598, visible in 
England, to illustrate Shakspeare. He did not know me per- 
sonally, and could not possibly see how they could apply to the 
passage till it was set right. But he was good enough to get 
J. B. Hind, Esq. 1 and his staff to enter on the necessarily 
elaborate calculations, and read the skiey volume backwards for 
nearly three centuries. And sure enough the eclipses were there ; 
they had occurred ; and I have the path of the shadow of the 
solar eclipse over England mapped out, together with notes 
on the eclipse of the moon, showing that there was a large 
eclipse of the moon on February 20th (21 morning), Gregorian, 
and a large eclipse of the sun, possibly total in some parts of 
Britain, on the 6th of March, 1598. Two eclipses in a fortnight 
— the sun and the moon darkened as if for the Judgment Day ! 
Such a fact could hardly fail to have its effect on the mind of 
Shakspeare, and be noted in his play of the period, just as he 
works up the death of Marlowe, " late deceased in beggary " (i.e. 
in a scuffle in a brothel), in " A Midsummer Night's Dream ; " the 
wet, ungenial seasons of 1593-4 (same play); the "new map," 
in " Twelfth Night; " and the earthquake spoken of by the Nurse in 
" Eomeo and Juliet." We shall see further on that Shakspeare has 
another possible reference to these eclipses of the sun and moon. 

According to my restored reading and interpretation, then, the 
speaker alludes to things that occurred out of the order of nature 
as prognostications of Caesar's sudden death ; and he goes on to 
say that a " like preeurse " (not like 'precursors, mark !) has in our 
country and climate presaged similar things. We too have had 
our harbingers of the fates, and the coming imminent events 
have been darkly and fiercely foreshadowed to us on earth by 
awful signs and wonders in the heavens ; or, as he puts it, the 
" like precurse " of " fierce events " have heaven and earth 
together demonstrated in the shape of meteors, bloody dews, 
disasters in the sun, and an almost total eclipse of the moon. 
Now, as these latter had not taken place in Eome or Denmark, 
and had occurred in England in 1598, the conclusion is forced 
upon us that Shakspeare was writing " Hamlet " in 1598, and that 
the eclipses are introduced there because they had just occurred 
and were well known to his audience. 

Our poet had what we in our day of Positive Philosophy 
may think a weakness for the supernatural, a most quick appre- 
hension of the neighbourhood of the spirit-world bordering on 
ours, and of its power to break in on the world of flesh. So 
many of his characters are overshadowed by the "skiey in- 
fluences." And with this belief so firmly fixed in the popular 
mind, and so often appealed to and breathed upon by our poet 

1 Superintendent of the "Nautical Almanack." 



OF SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 49 

in his Plays, he takes these two eclipses in the passage quoted 
from " Hamlet," and covertly becomes the interpreter of their 
meaning to the English people. He does not simply allude to 
the darkness that covered the land, does not merely describe 
the late event, but most distinctly and definitely points the 
moral of it for the behoof of his listeners. Certain deadly signs 
are said to have ushered in the fate of Cresar, and the poet finds 
in the late eclipses and meteors the " like precurse " of a similar 
event to come ; he holds these to be " harbingers preceding still 
the fates," the " prologue to the omen coming on." He had done 
the same thing in " King Eichard the Second," where the 
Captain says — 

" Meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven ; 
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth, 
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change. 
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings." 

And this was the play chosen for representation the night before 
Essex made his attempt. 

Having identified the eclipses as English, and not Bomish 
or Danish, we must go one step further and see that the appli- 
cation is meant to be English, and Shakspeare points to the death 
or deposition of Elizabeth ! Obviously, Shakspeare had read 
William of Malmsbury, who tells his readers that the eclipse of 
August 2nd, 1133, presaged the death of Henry I. " The elements 
showed their grief," he says, " at the passing away of this great 
king, for on that day the sun hid his resplendent face at the sixth 
hour, in fearful darkness, disturbing men's minds by his eclipse." 
Our poet treats the eclipses of 1598 in the same spirit, and 
holds them to presage similar fierce events to those that took 
place in Borne, which had been heralded and proclaimed by 
signs and portents in earth and heaven. It may seem strange 
that Shakspeare should use the phrase "disasters in the sun;" 
but possibly the eclipse may have been preceded by one of the 
great magnetic disturbances, and he had noted the sun-spots, and 
so lie has pluralised the phenomenon. Moreover, it is the eclipse 
of the moon he has to bring out. The " moist star " has to do 
double duty for the moon and monarch too. Elizabeth ivas the 
moon, and a changeful one also ! She was the " Cynthia " of 
Spenser, Ealeigh, Jonson, and all the poets of the time. She was 
governess of the sea as much as the moon was "governess of floods." 
That is why the emphasis is laid on the lunar eclipse, when the 
sun's must ' have been so much the more obvious. It is a per- 
sonification ; a fact with Janus faces to it. The Queen, who 
is the " mortal moon," had, I find, a special sickness at the time, 
and this year 1598 was the one in which her health is visibly 
beginning to break. The general effect of the year of eclipse 
would thus be gathered up and pointed with its most ominous 
and particular signification — the sickness and coming death or 

E 



50 THE SECRET DRAMA. 

deposition of Elizabeth. This suggestion, which may be also 
an explanation, dovetails with and doubles the effect of the 
previous suggestion, that the poet was turning contemporary 
circumstances to account, and underlining them for private pur- 
poses with a covert significance. 

lie recurs to the subject again in " King Lear." Gloster says, 
" These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. 
We have seen the best of our time." Possibly our poet replies 
to himself in the person of Edmund, who, when asked by Edgar 
what he is thinking of, answers, " I am thinking, brother, of a 
prediction I read the other day, what should follow these eclipses!' 
Edmund mocks at the superstitious notions entertained of 
eclipses : " This is the excellent foppery of the world ! we make 
guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars : as if we were 
villains by necessity ; fools by heavenly compulsion ; all that 
we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on ; " — which sounds like a 
scoff at what he had previously written ; and there looks like a 
sly allusion, a self -midge, as it were, in Edgar's question, " How 
long have you been a sectary astronomical ? " Be this as it may, 
the allusion to the late eclipses in the sun and moon does tend to the 
corroboration of my view that he refers to the same in " Hamlet." 
I think he certainly does allude to his prediction made in 
" Hamlet " with regard to the eclipses and verify its supposed 
application to the Queen, thus clenching my conclusion, in the 
10 7th of his Sonnets. This Sonnet I hold to be written by 
Shakspeare as his greeting to the Earl of Southampton, who was 
released from the Tower on the death of Elizabeth. In this 
Shakspeare says : — 

" The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured, 
And the sad augurs mock their own presage." 

He himself had presaged "fierce events," and had afterwards 
feared the worst for his friend doomed first to death and then 
to a life-long imprisonment, but he finds the great change has 
taken place peaceably. 

There is likewise in Sonnet 124 a link such as constitutes a 
perfect tally with the prediction deduced by me from the passage 
in " Hamlet." The speaker says his " love " is so happily cir- 
cumstanced that it 

" fears not policy — that heretic 
Which works on leases of short-numbered hours." 

It was the Queen's " policy " for years to prevent the marriage of 
Southampton, and the poet here implies that the " heretic " 
won't live for ever. 

Students of Shakspeare's times, his life, and works, unless 
their view may have been distorted by a wrong interpretation of 
Meres' meaning when he spoke of Shakspeare's " private friends" 
amongst whom the " sugared sonnets " circulated, will have 
received an impression that our poet must have been in some 



or shakspeare's sonnets. 51 

way, to some extent, mixed up with the affairs of Essex. I am 
told that the late Mr. Croker, of the Quarterly Review, always 
entertained this opinion, although he could never lay his hand 
on any very tangible evidence of the fact. There is constructive 
evidence enough to show, that if Shakspeare was not hand-in- 
glove with the Essex faction, he fought on their side pen -in- 
hand. In the chorus at the end of " Henry the Fifth" lie intro- 
duced a prophecy of the Earl's expected successes in Ireland. 

Then, one of the counts in Essex's indictment was the play of 
" King Pdchard the Second," which, according to Bacon's account 
of Meyrick's arraignment, was ordered to be played to satisfy his 
eyes with a sight of that tragedy which he thought soon after 
his lord should bring from the stage to the State. That this 
play was Shakspeare's cannot be doubted, except by the most 
wilful crassness or determined blindness ; nor that the " new 
additions of the Parliament scene, and the deposing of King 
Richard, as it hath been lately acted by the King's Majesty's ser- 
vants at the Globe" were made to the drama, previously written 
by Shakspeare, at the call of his patrons, the confused recollections 
of Forman notwithstanding. I have now to add another bit of 
evidence, that Shaksneare did throw a little light on things 
political with the darJc lanthom, and introduce allusions which, 
to say the least, were calculated to make play for Essex ; and 
thus far we must hold that our poet was on the same side, and 
rowed, as we say, in the same boat with these " private friends " 
of his. If we glance for a moment at the condition of things in 
England, and particularly in London, in 1598, it will increase the 
significance of Shakspeare's presaging lines. 

That year lies in shadow ominously and palpably as though 
the eclipses had sunk and stained into the minds of men: this is 
as obvious to feeling as the eclipses were to sight. We breathe 
heavily in the atmosphere of that year ; the scent of treason is 
rank in the air. That was the year in which the nation greAv so 
troubled about the future : the Queen's health was breaking, and 
Cecil opened secret negotiations with James YI. of Scotland. 
Essex and his associates were on the alert with the res", A 
witness deposed that as early as 1594 Essex had said he would 
have the crown for himself if he could secure it ; and whether 
the expression be true or not, one cannot doubt that it jumps 
with the Earl's intent. Moreover, he was as near a blood relation 
to the Queen as was King James of Scotland. The gathering of 
treason was ripening fast, to break in insurrection. Essex became 
more and more secret in his practices. Strange men flocked 
round him, and were noticed stealing through the twilight to 
Essex House. He became more and more familiar with those 
who were known to be discontented and disloyal. The mud of 
London life, in jail, and bridewell, and tavern, quickens into 
mysterious activity in this shadow of eclipse. Things that have 

E 2 



52 THE SECRET DRAMA 

only been accustomed to crawl and lurk, begin to walk about 
boldly in the open day. The whisperings of secret intrigue grow 
audible in the mutterings of rebellion and threats of the coming 
" fierce events." The Catholics are seen to gather closer and 
closer round Essex ; their chief fighting tools, their Jesuit agents, 
their dangerous outsiders, hem him round or hang upon his 
skirts. Blount and others grow impatient of waiting so long, 
and are mad to strike an early blow. The Earl, as usual, is 
irresolute. He is not quite a Catholic, and no doubt has his 
views apart from the hopes and expectations of the Catholics. 
Still, there is the conspiracy. The plans are formed, the plot is 
laid, the leaders are all ready, could Hamlet — I mean Essex — 
but make up his mind to strike. And in this year, in the midst 
of these circumstances, Shakspeare holds up that mirror, so often 
held up to Nature, to reflect the signs in heaven, and interpret 
them to the people as symbols of the coming death of Elizabeth, 
and the fall of her throne : — 

" And even the like precurse of fierce events 
(As harbingers preceding still the fates, 
And prologue to the omen coming on), 
Have heaven and earth together demonstrated 
Unto our climatures and countrymen." 

Is it possible to doubt that our poet is not aware of all that is 
darkly going on, and all that is expected shortly to take place ? 
ISTot only does he indicate the " fierce events " which may be 
looked for, but he reads the portents as heaven's warrant or sign- 
manual of what is going to happen. I have before argued that 
Shakspeare took sides with Southampton against the tyranny of 
Elizabeth in the matter of his marriage with Elizabeth Vernon : 
that fact I find written all through his Sonnets. And that his 
intimacy with the Earl, to whom he dedicated " love without 
end," went still deeper, I cannot doubt. As with Antonio in 
his friendship for Sebastian, the Viola-faced youth of the 
" Twelfth Night," he would give his 

" love without retention or restraint, 
All his in dedication," 

because he was one like Antonio again, who, 

" for his love dares yet do more 
Than you have heard him brag to you he will" 

Not that I think our poet abetted Southampton on his path 
of conspiracy. I know he bewails the young Earl's courses ; his 
dwelling in the society of evil companions and wicked, dangerous 
men. In Sonnet 67 he mourns that his young friend should 
live with "infection" and with his presence grace impiety ; that 
he should give the " advantage " to " sin," by allowing it to take 
shelter and steal a grace from his "society." In Sonnet 69 he 
tells the Earl that he has grown common in the mouths of men 
in consequence of his " ill-deeds," and because by his low com- 



or shakspeare's sonnets. 53 

panionship lie to his " fair flower adds the rank smell of weeds ; " 
and he warns him that — 

" Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." 

In all likelihood these very men against whom our poet is warn- 
ing his young friend are the blackguardly crew that was creep- 
ing into the company of Essex and urging him on to his 
destruction. But I do believe that our poet was induced by 
Southampton to lend his pen, so far as they could get him to go, 
with the view of serving the cause of Essex, and that for love of 
Southampton lie kept beside him. They sought to make use of 
him when and where they could, just as a statesman or a con- 
spirator of the time might make use of a preacher at Paul's Cross, 
to be, as it were, a living poster for the purpose of announcing 
certain things to the crowd. An intimation could be made by 
the Dramatist as effectively as though he had distributed hand- 
bills. And in this covert way, I take it, was Shakspeare working 
in that passage quoted from " Hamlet." 

The non-appearance of the lines in the first quarto, and their 
suppression in the first folio edition, tends to corroborate and 
increase the significance of the subject matter. They were not 
printed during the Queen's life, and, as they were not likely to be 
spoken when her Majesty was at the theatre or Court repre- 
sentation, they would demand careful handling. This may have 
entailed such a manipulation of the passage as led to the shifting 
of the lines in print, and the consequent difficulty from which 
they have not till now recovered. 

In the 125th Sonnet, Southampton defied not only Time, 
imprisonment, and statecraft, but also the " suborned informer " 
who was the immediate cause of his " confined doom." Camden 
tells us that there was such a person amongst the Essex con- 
spirators, but he could not find out which of them it was 
who played the dastard. We are able to identify pretty con- 
fidently the man thus marked by Shakspeare as the " black 
sheep " of the Essex flock of friends. This hireling spy was 
undoubtedly Lord Monteagle. He was known to be in the 
conspiracy: there were damning proofs against him. It was 
he who made the arrangement with the Players, and paid 
them to perform "King Eichard the Second" on the eve of 
the insurrection, but he was not even put on trial for his life. 
It is said that when Coke rose with certain evidence in his 
hand, he dropped the name of Monteagle from the sworn deposi- 
tions of Phillips the player, and inserted that of Meyrick in its 
stead. Lord Monteagle was fined ; Meyrick was executed. This, 
coupled with Lord Monteagle' s subsequent conduct in the " Gun- 
powder Plot," shows that he was the secret spy of the Govern- 
ment ; the traitor to Essex and his friends ; the " suborned 
informer' of Shakspeare's Sonnets. 



54 THE SECRET DRAMA 

And now, since Shakspeare was the known author of " King 
Kichard the Second," and whispering tongues informed the 
Queen that the play was intended to familiarise the people with 
the deposition and death of monarchs ; since these hints affected 
her so much that she exclaimed fiercely to Lambard, Keeper of 
the Eecords, " I am Eichard — know you not that ? " — since such 
was the intimacy of Shakspeare with Essex's friends, and when 
the Lords Southampton and Eutland were inquired after for 
non-attendance at Court, her Majesty would learn that they 
passed their time in seeing plays at the theatre of this play- 
wright, William Shakspeare, — is it possible that our poet could 
have escaped suspicion and passed on his way quite unchallenged 
in the matter ? I more than doubt it. At p. 291, I remarked on 
the unusual intensity of feeling in a personal sonnet, in which 
he says : — 

" Against my love shall be, as I am now, 
With Time's injurious hand crushed and o'er-worn." 

He appears to be broken down. It is not a question of health 
only. I ventured to suspect that it had to do with political 
affairs. The whole group looks as if the shadow of death lay 
on the lines and also on himself, if not on the friend as well. 
John Davies' lines tend to strongly confirm that conjecture : — 

" Well fare thee, man of art and world of wit, 
Thai by sujpremest mercy livest yd /" 

Was it so near a chance with him, then, that it was only by the 
sheerest mercy of God that Shakspeare escaped from the wreck 
and ruin of his "private friends?" To all appearance that is 
what John Davies means. 

Yours faithfully, 

Gerald Masse y. 



P.S. — At p. 240 I referred to the unsatisfactory reading of a perplexing 
passage in the "Tempest :" — 

"My sweet mistress 
Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness 
Had ne'er like executor ! I forget — 
But these sweet thoughts do e'en refresh my labours — ■ 
Most busiless when I do it." 

I now believe "baseness" is a misprint, that it has been repeated from 
the line above, " There be some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone ; " 
and that the word should be " business." Shakspeare was fond of the word 
in his later writings. In this play we find " the present business," " to do 
me business," " this business making," and " much business appertaining." 
Shakspeare was himself business man enough to know that it was more 
natural to execute "business" than "baseness." Moreover, this new lection 
will give us the right true Shakspearean antithesis, whilst proving and perfect- 
ing Theobald's emendation. Let us try the passage so : — 

"My sweet mistress 
Weeps when she jsees me work, and says such business 
Had ne'er like executor .' I forget ;— 
But these svreet thoughts do e'en refresh my labours — 
Most busiless when 1 do it." 



OF SHAKSPEARE S SONNETS. bo 

I argued, at page 486, that Horatio could not be meant tor Lord South- 
ampton, even though Essex supplied the character of Hamlet. But I think I 
know who was the living original of Horatio. At least, as a suggestion to be 
thought over, what do you say to Bacon 1 He was for some years in Essex's 
service — part lawyer, part man of political business, and very intimate with 
him as the cooler-headed, wiser friend. To my mind the practical, philosophic, 
and slightly sceptical character of Horatio is very Baconian. 

"So have I heard, and do in part believe." 

You may see the mental motion and meditative moving of the living lips 
of Francis Bacon in that ! Then there is the bright sedateness, the calm 
temperance, the philosophy of the man who is drawn as the Philosopher : — 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamed of in yoiir philosophy." 

The description, which did not apply to Southampton, does to Bacon, with a 

perfect fit : — 

" Thou hast been 
As one in suffering all, that suffers nothing ; 
A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards 
Hast ta'en with equal thanks ! 

and blest are those 

Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled 
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger 
To sound what stop she please. 

Give me that man 

That is not Passion's slave," &c. 

Essex tried often and hard to advance the fortunes of his friend at Court, 
and did not succeed. I like- to think that is his personal testimony to the 
manner in which the failures were borne by Bacon. Bacon's was a character 
sure to arrest the attention and study of our dramatist, especially in contrast 
with that of Essex. He had one such in view, I fancy, when in his 94th 
Sonnet he extolled those who are 

"the lords and owners of their faces, 
Who rightly do inherit Heaven's graces, 
And husband Nature's riches from expense." 

I believe I spoke too grudgingly of Ben Jonson, having, like others, been 
unduly influenced by the often-asserted ill-feeling said to have been shown by 
him toward Shakspeare. It does seem as though you have only to repeat a 
lie often to get it confirmed with the world in general as a truth. I ought to 
have relied more on the spirit of his poem. He has left us the noblest lines 
ever written on Shakspeare ; in these we have the very finest, fullest, frankest 
recognition of the master-spirit of imagination. He salutes him as a writer 
too great for rivalry, but in a manner that reaches a kindred greatness. Nor 
do I think the likeness in these lines is the only personal impression of Shak- 
speare left by Ben Jonson, If it had not been for the persistent endeavour 
to prove Shakspeare a lawyer, and too confidently assumed that the 
character, or rather the name, of Ovid, in the " Poetaster " (produced at 
Shakspeare's theatre, 1601), was intended for Shakspeare, it would have been 
seen that it is in the character of " Virgil " that Jonson has rendered the 
nature of the man, the quality of his learning, the affluence of his poetry, 
the height at which the poet himself stood above his work, in the truest, best 
likeness of Shakspeare extant : — 

THE MAN. 

" I judge him of a rectified spirit, 
(By many revolutions of discourse 
In his bright reason's influence) refined 
From all the tartarous moods of common men : 
Bearing the nature and similitude 
Of a right heavenly body : most severe 
In fashion and collection of himself, 
And then as clear and confident as Jove." 



c7 



56 THE SECRET DRAMA OF SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. 

HIS POETRY. 

" That which lie hath writ 
Is with such judgment laboured, and distilled 
Thro' all the needful uses of our lives, 
v. That could a man remember but his lines, 
He should not touch at any serious point. 
But he might breathe his spirit out of him. 
And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life, 
That it shall gather strength of life with being, 
And live hereafter more admired than now." 

HIS LEARNING. 

"His learning savours not the school-like gloss 
That most consists in echoing words and terms, 
And soonest wins a man an empty name : 
Nor any long or far- fetch t circumstance 
Wrapped in the various generalities of Art, 
But a direct and analytic sum 
Of all the worth and first effects of Arts. 
And yet so chaste and tender is his ear, 
In suffering any syliable to pass, 
That he thinks may become the honoured name 
Of issue to his so-examined self, 1 
That all the lasting fruits of his full merits 
In his own poems he doth still distaste, 
As if his mind's piece, which he strove to paint, 
Could not with fleshly pencils have her right." 

Part of this is spoken by " Horace," who is Ben himself, and said in reply to 
Caesar, who had just described him as the likeliest to envy or detract. How 
cordially one can repeat his epitaph — 

" O RARE BEN JONSON ! " 

1 "Look how the father's face 
Lives in his issue ; even so the race 
Of Shakspeare's mind and manners brightly shines 
In his well-turned and true-filed lines." 

Bf.k Jonson. 



<6 



R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, LONDON. 



